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An accurate assessment of evapotranspiration (ET) is crucially needed at the basin scale for studying the hydrological processes and water balance especially from upstream to downstream. In the mountains, this term is poorly understood because of various challenges, including the vegetation complexity, plant diversity, lack of available data and because the in situ direct measurement of ET is difficult in complex terrain. The main objective of this work was to investigate the potential of a Two-Source-Energy-Balance model (TSEB) driven by the Landsat and MODIS data for estimating ET over a complex mountain region. The complexity is associated with the type of the vegetation canopy as well as the changes in topography. For validating purposes, a large-aperture scintillometer (LAS) was set up over a heterogeneous transect of about 1.4 km to measure sensible (H) and latent heat (LE) fluxes. Additionally, two towers of eddy covariance (EC) systems were installed along the LAS transect. First, the model was tested at the local scale against the EC measurements using multi-scale remote sensing (MODIS and Landsat) inputs at the satellite overpasses. The obtained averaged values of the root mean square error (RMSE) and correlation coefficient (R) were about 72.4 Wm−2 and 0.79 and 82.0 Wm−2 and 0.52 for Landsat and MODIS data, respectively. Secondly, the potential of the TSEB model for evaluating the latent heat fluxes at large scale was investigated by aggregating the derived parameters from both satellites based on the LAS footprint. As for the local scale, the comparison of the latent heat fluxes simulated by TSEB driven by Landsat data performed well against those measured by the LAS (R = 0.69, RMSE = 68.0 Wm−2), while slightly more scattering was observed when MODIS products were used (R = 0.38, RMSE = 99.8 Wm−2). Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that (1) the TSEB model can be fairly used to estimate the evapotranspiration over the mountain regions; and (2) medium- to high-resolution inputs are a better option than coarse-resolution products for describing this kind of complex terrain.

The main objective of this work was to retrieve surface soil moisture (SSM) by using scattering models and a support vector machine (SVM) technique driven by backscattering coefficients obtained from Sentinel-1 satellite images acquired over bare agricultural soil in the Tensfit basin of Morocco. Two backscattering models were selected in this study due to their wide use in inversion procedures: the theoretical integral equation model (IEM) and the semi-empirical model (Oh). To this end, the sensitivity of the SAR backscattering coefficients at V V ( σ v v ∘ ) and V H ( σ v h ∘ ) polarizations to in situ soil moisture data were analyzed first. As expected, the results showed that over bare soil the σ v v ∘ was well correlated with SSM compared to the σ v h ∘ , which showed more dispersion with correlation coefficients values (r) of about 0.84 and 0.61 for the V V and V H polarizations, respectively. Afterwards, these values of σ v v ∘ were compared to those simulated by the backscatter models. It was found that IEM driven by the measured length correlation L slightly underestimated SAR backscatter coefficients compared to the Oh model with a bias of about − 0.7 dB and − 1.2 dB and a root mean square (RMSE) of about 1.1 dB and 1.5 dB for Oh and IEM models, respectively. However, the use of an optimal value of L significantly improved the bias of IEM, which became near to zero, and the RMSE decreased to 0.9 dB. Then, a classical inversion approach of σ v v ∘ observations based on backscattering model is compared to a data driven retrieval technic (SVM). By comparing the retrieved soil moisture against ground truth measurements, it was found that results of SVM were very encouraging and were close to those obtained by IEM model. The bias and RMSE were about 0.28 vol.% and 2.77 vol.% and − 0.13 vol.% and 2.71 vol.% for SVM and IEM, respectively. However, by taking into account the difficultly of obtaining roughness parameter at large scale, it was concluded that SVM is still a useful tool to retrieve soil moisture, and therefore, can be fairly used to generate maps at such scales.

Estimates of turbulent fluxes (i.e., sensible and latent heat fluxes H and LE) over heterogeneous surfaces is not an easy task. The heterogeneity caused by the contrast in vegetation, hydric and soil conditions can generate a large spatial variability in terms of surface–atmosphere interactions. This study considered the issue of using a thermal-based two-source energy model (TSEB) driven by MODIS (Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) observations in conjunction with an aggregation scheme to derive area-averaged H and LE over a heterogeneous watershed in Niamey, Niger (Wankama catchment). Data collected in the context of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) program, including a scintillometry campaign, were used to test the proposed approach. The model predictions of area-averaged turbulent fluxes were compared to data acquired by a Large Aperture Scintillometer (LAS) set up over a transect about 3.2 km-long and spanning three vegetation types (millet, fallow and degraded shrubs). First, H and LE fluxes were estimated at the MSG-SEVIRI grid scale by neglecting explicitly the subpixel heterogeneity. Moreover, the impact of upscaling the model’s inputs was investigated using in-situ input data and three aggregation schemes of increasing complexity based on MODIS products: a simple averaging of inputs at the MODIS resolution scale, another simple averaging scheme that considers scintillometer footprint extent, and the weighted average of inputs based on the footprint weighting function. The H and LE simulated using the footprint weighted method were more accurate than for the two other aggregation rules despite the heterogeneity of the landscape. The statistical values are: correlation coefficient (R) = 0.71, root mean square error (RMSE) = 63 W/m2 and mean bias error (MBE) = −23 W/m2 for H and an R = 0.82, RMSE = 88 W/m2 and MBE = 45 W/m2 for LE. This study opens perspectives for the monitoring of convective and evaporative fluxes over heterogeneous landscape based on medium resolution satellite products.