Something about Near Surface Soil Moisture and L-Band Microwave Radiometry at RedRock Research Site 2 (RRR2) Pre-Burn

This short single file PDF version of a slide deck presentation, was delivered on the afternoon Thursday 02 April 2026 at the Annual Nevada Statewide Meeting of NSF EPSCoR held at the campus of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA in a student union ballroom. It was presented by Professor of Atmospheric Physics Dr. Marco Giordano. There is a narrated version of this presentation to be released at a future date. The basics of the presentation talked through the essential problem of determining near surface soil moisture (nSSM) by passive remote means in a favorable temporal and geospatial footprint. This method improves upon satellite scaling and is more comparable to in-ground field measurement, with greater coverage in a shorter time. The presenter spoke on the fundamentals of the relationship between factors influencing the earth's surface microwave emissivity, measurable Brightness Temperature (TB), surface roughness and volumetric soil moisture content. Results of a field test on Sunday 23 November 2025 which directly compared the remotely-sensed retreived and geotagged volumetric soil moisture map with laboratory gravimetric analysis of specific ground points collected at the time of the UAS instrument deployment. The available results were highly comparable, but the insufficiency of in-ground data made statistical metrics not viable to calculate for correlative purposes over that brief measurement period. Acknowledgement: the authors would express their gratitude to the Nevada State Office of Sponsored Programs Division of Research, and its individual staff members for arranging and hosting the annual statewide meeting wher the results of this work were presented. To the Nevada State NSF EPSCoR director Professor Dr. Frederick Harris for inviting us to present at his annual meeting, and for securing federal and state funding for the research infrastructure development sub-awards within the state of Nevada. Most importantly, we wish to give great thanks to our dedicated scientific colleagues who reviewed our proposal, offered insightful review feedback, and voted to grant our award.