BNSC ICP Applications Development Cooperation with the SAOCOM PROGRAMME

1
BNSC ICPApplications Development Co-operation
with the SAOCOM PROGRAMME

• Final Presentation
• 30 October 2007

2
Contents

• Objectives of the project
• CONAE space policy missions
• SOACOM system and SAOCOM applications
• Soil moisture
• Applications development workshop
• Future lines of collaboration

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Objectives

• To establish collaboration between UK and
  Argentina to maximise the exploitation of SAR
  data from SAOCOM in the short term and from other
  L-Band missions in the longer term.
• To demonstrate that UK skills and know-how can
  contribute to enhancing the success of the SAOCOM
  programme
• To assess specific areas where UK expertise can
  contribute to improving the performance of
  strategic applications
• To implement a specific applications support
  initiative, designed to ensure CONAEs targets
  for soil moisture accuracy are met
• To identify options for future co-operation
  frameworks leading to UK participation in the
  programme and access to data

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Contents

• Objectives of the project
• CONAE space policy missions
• SOACOM system and SAOCOM applications
• Soil moisture
• Applications development workshop
• Future lines of collaboration

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Introduction to CONAE Space Policy

• CONAEs space policy is user driven and based on
  the concept of Space Information Cycles
• Six cycles identified
• agricultural, fishing and forest activities
• climate, hydrology and oceanography
• disaster management
• monitoring of environment and natural resources
• cartography, geology and mining production
• health applications

The gathering of timely and adequate space
information on the national territory, both land
and sea, which, conveniently combined with
information from other sources contributes to
optimize specific socio-economic activities of
the country.
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CONAE lines of action
Access to Space
Satellite Missions
CONAE
Information Systems
Ground Infrastructure
Institutional Development
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CONAE satellite programmes

• SAC Series
• Instruments centered on the optical and passive
  microwave range
• SAOCOM Series
• Instruments centered on the active microwave
  range (SAR)
• SARE Series
• High revisit satellite with both technological
  and earth sciences objectives

.
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SAC-C

• Collaboration with NASA. Operational for 7 years
• 8 Instruments
• Main Argentine Instrument MMSR
• Multispectral
• 175M resolution

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SAC-D / Aquarius
SAC-D / Aquarius Mission Covers science
observational objectives defined in CONAEs
National Space Program and science objectives
defined in NASAs Earth Science Enterprise
Strategic Plan

• Satellite platform, MWR, NIRST
• Mission Operation Ground Segment

• Aquarius Instrument
• for SSS measurements
• Launch May 22, 2010

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Contents

• Objectives of the project
• CONAE space policy missions
• SOACOM system and SAOCOM applications
• Soil moisture
• Applications development workshop
• Future lines of collaboration

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SAOCOM

• Two satellite L-Band SAR
• 10m resolution, fully polarised
• Phased array antenna 4.2 KW peak power
• 1750kg launch mass
• Technical support and investment (to pay for
  launches) from ASI

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SAOCOM SAR main features

• Two satellite system with launches in 2010 and
  2011
• Synchronised with COSMO/Skymed

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SAOCOM high level requirements

• To provide all weather, day/night polarimetric
  L-Band SAR information obtained over Argentina
  and other regions of interest resulting from
  international cooperation agreements, in real
  time/store mode, with spatial resolution from 10
  to 100 meters, and with different incidence
  angles.
• To satisfy most of the applications considered in
  the Spatial Information Cycles of the Argentine
  National Space Plan with particular emphasis in
  emergencies and health.
• To obtain specific L-Band SAR derived products,
  in particular soil moisture maps, for
  agriculture, emergencies and health applications
  because of their proved economic impact
• To obtain L-Band interferometric SAR derived
  products, in particular DEMs, terrain
  displacement maps and forest features

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SAOCOM SAR beam modes
Flight Direction
619.6 km Orbital altitude
Ground track
180 Km
60 km
320 km
STRIPMAP QUAD POL gt 170 km range swath gt 30 km
swath 10 m x 10 m (High Res.) 20 m x 20 m (Mid
Res.)
SCANSAR Wide SINGLEDOUBLE gt 320 km swath 100 m x
100 m
STRIPMAP SINGLEDOUBLE gt 320 km range swath gt 40
km swath 10 m x 10 m (High Res.) 20 m x 20 m (Mid
Res.)
SCANSAR Narrow SINGLEDOUBLE gt 320 km range
swath gt120 km swath 50 m x 50 m
120 Km
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SARAT airborne SAR

• Operational now
• Calibration in progress
• AO soon

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SAOCOM applications

• CONAE is considering a wide range of applications
  for SAOCOM, based on the information needs
  expressed in the space plan
• Strategic Applications are those which were
  used to drive a CBA for the InterAmerican
  Development Bank funding of the project
• Other applications being pursued
• Land stability and tectonic risk
• Snow water assessment and runoff modelling
• Environmental epidemiology

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SAOCOM strategic applications I
Soil And Vegetation Moisture Map To Prevent
Biotic Agents In Agriculture
to optimize the agrochemical use in crop disease
control
INTACONAE
Soil And Vegetation Moisture Map for the
Decision Making in Agricultural Production for
Fertilization
to optimize sowing time and fertilizers use in
the area of Pampa húmeda
to minimize the losses due to floods in
Argentina, and to optimize the protection works
for future floods
Risk Management and Hydrological Emergencies
INACONAE
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SAOCOM strategic applications II

• Strategic applications are based on natural
  resource utilisations and public protection
• 2006 Argentine wheat production was 14.5 M tons
  which represents US 2,650M earnings
• Massive, relatively poorly instrumented
  catchments
• Plata basin 3.2m km2 with 100m inhabitants

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Contents

• Objectives of the project
• CONAE space policy missions
• SOACOM system and SAOCOM applications
• Soil moisture
• Applications development workshop
• Future lines of collaboration

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Why worry about soil moisture ?

• Critical to all three of CONAEs strategic
  applications
• Very significant globally
• Very important for improving ground atmosphere
  coupling in GCMs -Critical parameter for
  improving medium range weather forecasts
• Strongly linked to six of the nine GEO benefits
  areas, especially water
• Strongly linked to several aspects of the NERC
  strategy, and themes of the NCEO
• Scientifically and technologically challenging

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CONAE Approach

• Integrated applications development teams with
  INA (Hydrology) and INTA (Agriculture)
• Collaboration with JPL on SAR image processing
• Data collection campaigns

• Superficial soil moisture, SM. (Automatic sensors
  at 5 and 10 cm)
• Profile moisture sensor up to 1.6m
• Gravimetric SM
• Soil Roughness (Pin perfilometer, every 10 days)
• Canopy Wetness (Automatic sensors)
• Canopy Structure (Growth Analysis)

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Challenges in mapping soil moisture with EO

• The per pixel retrieval of soil moisture from
  SAR images is difficult due to the large number
  of factors affecting radar backscatter
• Soil dielectric properties
• Surface Roughness (soil type and tillage)
• Vegetation cover
• Relative lack of test data sets
• Spatial and temporal variability in soil moisture
• Most examples are empirical and applicability is
  suspect

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Sonning Farm soil moisture dataset
IR-Thermometer
Passive microwave radiometer
Wind-profile
Eddy-correlation system
Radiation sensors
psychrometer
AWS
Thetaprobes
Temperature profiles
Profile probes
Caroline Houldcroft, NERC-ESSC
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Soil moisture temporal variability I
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Soil moisture temporal variability II
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Estimating temporal sampling needs
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Data Assimilation for soil moisture
Modelling
Half-hourly Met. Data
Half-Hourly VSM
Estimate at resolution of model e.g. 4km
half-hourly VSM

• Weigh uncertainty in model and observations to
• produce a constrained estimate measure of
  uncertainty.
• Merge coarse and fine resolution observations
  with fine resolution modelled estimates.
• Estimate observed and unobserved states

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Use of temporal information
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Contents

• Objectives of the project
• CONAE space policy missions
• SOACOM system and SAOCOM applications
• Soil moisture
• Applications development workshop
• Future lines of collaboration

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Applications development workshop

• Held in Buenos Aires, 8-11 October
• 6 participants from the UK British Embassy
• 50-60 Participants from CONAE, INA, INTA and
  local universities
• Aim to deepen soil moisture cooperation and widen
  to other applications

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Future lines of cooperation
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Soil moisture

• Plans being made for a shadow development to
  improve the reliability and accuracy of soil
  moisture retrieval using modelling and data
  assimilation
• Improve the usefullness of SOAOCM strategic
  applications
• Develop techniques than can be applied more
  widely, for example in SMOS Cal/Val
• UK scientists to gain access to data from the
  SARAT AO and field campaigns

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Airborne Campaigns

• Considering the possibility of a joint
  experimental campaign
• SARAT L-Band SAR
• COSMO/Skymed X-Band
• LiDAR and multispectral optical
• Targets
• Enhancing the strategic applications, especially
  flooding
• Forest structure for biodiversity and carbon
  modelling

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SAR Interferometry

• Ground stability and tectonic risks are not
  strategic applications, but CONAE is still keen
  to pursue them
• General requirements for InSAR are reflected in
  SAOCOM mission requirements
• COMET scientists will work with CONAE and staff
  in U. Mendoza to establish requirements for a
  background mission to assess tectonic risks at a
  regional (S. America) scale
• Focus on
• Orbit control and knowledge requirements
• Acquisition planning
• Application development

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Conclusions

• CONAE has a very coherent and ambitious EO
  programme
• They have considerable technical skills and they
  appear to have a lot of disposable income and
  the freedom to act independently
• CONAE data policy is focussed on collaborative
  agreements to determine data distribution
  priorities
• The best way to gain access to the data is to
  develop working relationships with CONAE and
  their applications partners
• Cooperation on soil moisture, tectonic risk and
  forest monitoring will help move forward three
  applications of high strategic importance for the
  UK and globally
• The EO world is changing. In the future we will
  see fewer missions from the US and more from
  Brazil, India, China, Argentina
• It is essential to maintain knowledge of these
  programmes and relationships with future
  potential partners