Generation of spatially complete and daily continuous surface soil moisture of high spatial resolution

Surface soil moisture (SSM), as a vital variable for water and heat exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere, is essential for agricultural production and drought monitoring, and serves as an important boundary condition for atmospheric models. The spatial resolution of soil moisture products from microwave remote sensing is relatively coarse (e.g., ~40 km × 40 km), whereas SSM of higher spatiotemporal resolutions (e.g., 1 km × 1 km and daily continuous) is more useful in water resources management. In this study, first, to improve the spatiotemporal completeness of SSM estimates, we downscaled land surface temperature (LST) output from the China Meteorological Administration Land Data Assimilation System (CLDAS, 0.0625° × 0.0625°) using a data fusion approach and MODIS LST acquired on clear-sky days to generate spatially complete and temporally continuous LST maps across the North China Plain. Second, spatially complete and daily continuous 1 km × 1 km SSM was generated based on random forest models combined with quality LST maps, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), surface albedo, precipitation, soil texture, SSM background fields from the European Space Agency Soil Moisture Climate Change Initiative (CCI, 0.25° × 0.25°) and CLDAS land surface model (LSM) SSM output (0.0625° × 0.0625°) to be downscaled, and in situ SSM measurements. Third, the importance of different input variables to the downscaled SSM was quantified. Compared with the original CCI and CLDAS SSM, both the accuracy and spatial resolution of the downscaled SSM were largely improved, in terms of a bias (root mean square error) of −0.001 cm3/cm3 (0.041 cm3/cm3) and a correlation coefficient of 0.72. These results are generally comparable and even better than those in published studies, with our SSM maps featuring spatiotemporal completeness and relatively high spatial resolution. The downscaled SSM maps are valuable for monitoring agricultural drought and optimizing irrigation scheduling, bridging the gaps between microwave-based and LSM-based SSM estimates of coarse spatial resolution and thermal infrared-based LST at a 1 km × 1 km resolution.