Soils Spring Productive Moisture Reserve Evaluation Model for Northern Kazakhstan on the Basis of NOAA/AVHRR Information

摘要

A study was conducted to assess the soil moisture distribution in the northern regions of Kazakhstan, which is the major agricultural area for spring wheat grain production. A model for calculating the available soil moisture in the top one-meter stratum of soil for the third decade of April was developed. This technique is based on the analysis of current information about the amount of precipitation during the cold period and the time period (dates) when the snowmelt occurs which are derived from NOAA AVHRR imagery (1 km resolution). The multiyear average maps of available soil moisture and snowmelt dates are taken into account for calculating the current year soil moisture maps. A map of the maximum NDVI in July was correlated with the calculatedsoil moisture maps for the month of April for agricultural regions during 1997-2000. From the results of this study, the available soil moisture map at 1: 2.5 million scale was developed for the current year.