Abstract:
Notice to Data Users: The documentation for this data set was provided solely by the Principal Investigator(s) and was not further developed, thoroughly reviewed, or edited by NSIDC. Thus, support for this data set may be limited. This data set combines data for several parameters from in situ measurements for the Soil Moisture Experiment 2004 (SMEX04) in Sonora, Mexico. The data parameters
... include: volumetric soil moisture, soil temperature, and voltage from the Vitel Hydra Probe sensor; and precipitation gathered from rain gauges. Temporal coverage for the data spans from 01 June 2004 through 31 August 2004, where available. The total volume of this data set is approximately 5.6 megabytes in 15 ASCII text files. The data are available via FTP. These data were collected as part of a validation study for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E). AMSR-E is a mission instrument launched aboard NASA's Aqua Satellite on 04 May 2002. AMSR-E validation studies linked to SMEX are designed to evaluate the accuracy of AMSR-E soil moisture data. Specific validation objectives include assessing and refining soil moisture algorithm performance; verifying soil moisture estimation accuracy; investigating the effects of vegetation, surface temperature, topography, and soil texture on soil moisture accuracy; and determining the regions that are useful for AMSR-E soil moisture measurements. 
