A machine learning-based geostatistical downscaling method for
coarse-resolution soil moisture products
Abstract
The land Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) products derived from microwave
remote sensing have a coarse spatial resolution, therefore downscaling
is required to obtain accurate SSM at high spatial resolution. An
effective way to handle the stratified heterogeneity is to model for
various stratifications, however the number of samples is often limited
under each stratification, influencing the downscaling accuracy. In this
study, a machine learning-based geostatistical model, which combines
various ancillary information at fine spatial scale, is developed for
spatial downscaling. The proposed support vector area-to-area regression
kriging (SVATARK) model incorporates support vector regression and
area-to-area kriging by considering the nonlinear relationships among
variables for various stratifications. SVATARK also considers the change
of support problem in the downscaling interpolation process as well as
for solving the small sample size in trend prediction. The SVATARK
method is evaluated in the Naqu region on the Tibetan Plateau, China to
downscale the European Space Agency’s (ESA) 25-km-resolution SSM
product. The 1-km-resolution SSM predictions have been produced every 8
days over a six-year period (2010-2015). Compared with other two
methods, the downscaled predictions from the SVATARK method performs the
best with in-situ observations, resulting in a 23.6 percent reduction in
root mean square error and a 10.7 percent increase in correlation
coefficient, on average. Additionally, anomalously low SSM values, an
indicator of drought, had a record low anomaly in mid-July for 2015, as
noted by previous studies, indicating that SVATARK could be utilized for
drought monitoring.