Hi,

There are different methods to estimate the soil moisture content using Landsat 8 data (mostly bands red, NIR and thermals have been used). If you are looking for a simple method with moderate accuracy, the following paper introduced a simple method. Also you can include thermal bands in the model to get a higher level of accuracy.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-007-2004-6

Also, this is a good reference to review the soil moisture estimation methods using remote sensing: http://photonicsforenergy.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=1182520

Best wishes,

Meisam

hello said,

It's very difficult to calculate soil moisture from the reflectance image, there are now combinisons passive and active sensor that given an estimate of moisture, ESACCI-SSMV data for example.

But what you can do from the Landsat images is to estimate the moisture in the vegetation.

Good luck

Thanks Mohammed,

Of course, estimate soil moisture from Soil Moisture Active Passive sensor and SAR data have been done successfully by many researchers. But the important points for soil moisture estimation from Remote sensing data are: the scale of estimation, the availability and the cost. Landsat 8 OLI (Operational Land Imager) and TIRS (Thermal Infrared Sensor) images are free and have Thermal Infrared (TIRS) bands (Band 10  and 11, 100 m spatial resolution resampled to 30 meter) that can be used for soil moisture estimation with good spatial resolution.

http://landsat.usgs.gov/best_spectral_bands_to_use.php

Here you can find some findings about :Detecting threshold hydrological response through satellite by BROCCA et al

Greeting from Austria, JHUMER

Article Detecting threshold hydrological response through satellite ...

I suggest you to contact Prof. Veroustraete.

He is an expert on using thermal data for soil moisture estimation.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Veroustraete

Thanks a lot Mr. Humer for the nice paper.

Universal Triangle method (UTM) can be used for rough estimates of soil moisture. Although it does not perform well in all areas, soil moisture in some areas have been well predicted with a UTM model. Some papers which might be helpful:

http://www.itc.nl/library/papers_2009/msc/wrem/mekonnen.pdf

http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/7/8/1612/htm

check the following equation

NDWI = (1−SWIR/NIR) / (1+SWIR/NIR).

You can find our publications about soil moisture detection using solar  reflectance measurements, such as MODIS.

http://estc.gmu.edu/publication.shtml

Thanks Prof. John Qu for such helpful publications and very benefit website of your amazing research center.

Soil moisture values can be calculate by theTVI and surface temperature data obtained from thermal infrared imagery.

It can only obtain relative humid from thermal data. To obtain volumetric soil moisture, you need calibrate it through in-situ data, or use micro-wave data instead.

Dear Huihui,

I have tested SAR data for estimating soil moisture content and was successfully, but there is a limitation in data availability. Whereas, Landsat 8 is widely available for free. I completely agree that calibration is very important for accurate estimation.

Best regards

You could look into the two source energy balance model of ALEXI. This has been applied to thermal infrared data from geostationary satellites or MODIS and is in a later step disaggregated down to landsat resolution. While it's prime product is evaporation, it is also an indicator of moisture availability via the 'fraction of potential evaporation'. This product compares well with in situ measurements of soil moisture as demonstrated in Hain et al. 2011, see below. 

Article An Intercomparison of Available Soil Moisture Estimates from...

Hi,

There are different methods to estimate the soil moisture content using Landsat 8 data (mostly bands red, NIR and thermals have been used). If you are looking for a simple method with moderate accuracy, the following paper introduced a simple method. Also you can include thermal bands in the model to get a higher level of accuracy.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-007-2004-6

Also, this is a good reference to review the soil moisture estimation methods using remote sensing: http://photonicsforenergy.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=1182520

Best wishes,

Meisam

Hi, You may find our optical method helpful. See the following draft:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275659087_A_Calibrationless_Method_for_Optical_Remote_Sensing_of_Surface_Soil_Moisture

Data A Calibrationless Method for Optical Remote Sensing of Surfa...

We recently introduced a new and simple model for RS of soil moisture using optical reflectance data, applied to Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 observations. You can find our paper at:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317338205_The_optical_trapezoid_model_A_novel_approach_to_remote_sensing_of_soil_moisture_applied_to_Sentinel-2_and_Landsat-8_observations

Article The optical trapezoid model: A novel approach to remote sens...

Dear if you go through the link below you will find many articles regarding to what you need

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=estimate+soil+moisture+content+from+Landsat+8&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Following

To summarize what others have said here, I don't think you can get soil moisture very accurately with Landsat 8 alone. Typically microwave bands work well in getting soil moisture near the surface but at coarser resolution. 2 source modelling approaches like ALEXI/DisALEXI combine GOES/MODIS/Landst to produce better resolution and estimates soil moisture down to the ROOT zone soil. Last I looked into it is seemed it would take a lot of work to use a complex model like ALEXI/DisALEXI .