Development and Assessment of the SMAP Enhanced Passive Soil Moisture Product.

Launched in January 2015, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory was designed to provide frequent global mapping of high-resolution soil moisture and freeze-thaw state every two to three days using a radar and a radiometer operating at L-band frequencies. Despite a hardware mishap that rendered the radar inoperable shortly after launch, the radiometer continues to operate nominally, returning more than two years of science data that have helped to improve existing hydrological applications and foster new ones. Beginning in late 2016 the SMAP project launched a suite of new data products with the objective of recovering some high-resolution observation capability loss resulting from the radar malfunction. Among these new data products are the SMAP Enhanced Passive Soil Moisture Product that was released in December 2016, followed by the SMAP/Sentinel-1 Active-Passive Soil Moisture Product in April 2017. This article covers the development and assessment of the SMAP Level 2 Enhanced Passive Soil Moisture Product (L2_SM_P_E). The product distinguishes itself from the current SMAP Level 2 Passive Soil Moisture Product (L2_SM_P) in that the soil moisture retrieval is posted on a 9 km grid instead of a 36 km grid. This is made possible by first applying the Backus-Gilbert optimal interpolation technique to the antenna temperature (TA) data in the original SMAP Level 1B Brightness Temperature Product to take advantage of the overlapped radiometer footprints on orbit. The resulting interpolated TA data then go through various correction/calibration procedures to become the SMAP Level 1C Enhanced Brightness Temperature Product (LiC_TB_E). The LiC_TB_E product, posted on a 9 km grid, is then used as the primary input to the current operational SMAP baseline soil moisture retrieval algorithm to produce L2_SM_P_E as the final output. Images of the new product reveal enhanced visual features that are not apparent in the standard product. Based on in situ data from core validation sites and sparse networks representing different seasons and biomes all over the world, comparisons between L2_SM_P_E and in situ data were performed for the duration of April 1, 2015 - October 30, 2016. It was found that the performance of the enhanced 9 km L2_SM_P_E is equivalent to that of the standard 36 km L2_SM_P, attaining a retrieval uncertainty below 0.040 m3/m3 unbiased root-mean-square error (ubRMSE) and a correlation coefficient above 0.800. This assessment also affirmed that the Single Channel Algorithm using the V-polarized TB channel (SCA-V) delivered the best retrieval performance among the various algorithms implemented for L2_SM_P_E, a result similar to a previous assessment for L2_SM_P.

Surface Soil Moisture Retrieval Using the L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar Onboard the Soil Moisture Active-Passive Satellite and Evaluation at Core Validation Sites.

This paper evaluates the retrieval of soil moisture in the top 5-cm layer at 3-km spatial resolution using L-band dual-copolarized Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data that mapped the globe every three days from mid-April to early July, 2015. Surface soil moisture retrievals using radar observations have been challenging in the past due to complicating factors of surface roughness and vegetation scattering. Here, physically based forward models of radar scattering for individual vegetation types are inverted using a time-series approach to retrieve soil moisture while correcting for the effects of static roughness and dynamic vegetation. Compared with the past studies in homogeneous field scales, this paper performs a stringent test with the satellite data in the presence of terrain slope, subpixel heterogeneity, and vegetation growth. The retrieval process also addresses any deficiencies in the forward model by removing any time-averaged bias between model and observations and by adjusting the strength of vegetation contributions. The retrievals are assessed at 14 core validation sites representing a wide range of global soil and vegetation conditions over grass, pasture, shrub, woody savanna, corn, wheat, and soybean fields. The predictions of the forward models used agree with SMAP measurements to within 0.5 dB unbiased-root-mean-square error (ubRMSE) and -0.05 dB (bias) for both copolarizations. Soil moisture retrievals have an accuracy of 0.052 m3/m3 ubRMSE, -0.015 m3/m3 bias, and a correlation of 0.50, compared to in situ measurements, thus meeting the accuracy target of 0.06 m3/m3 ubRMSE. The successful retrieval demonstrates the feasibility of a physically based time series retrieval with L-band SAR data for characterizing soil moisture over diverse conditions of soil moisture, surface roughness, and vegetation.

New object onsets reduce conscious access to unattended targets.

Attention to a visual target can affect perception of a subsequent target for half a second, increasing its sensitivity to backward masking (the attentional blink, AB). In 6 studies, we compared the AB when the second target and its mask had a common onset and when the mask appeared after the target. The results indicate that common-onset masks do not produce large ABs even when there is a feature change or an interruption of the mask after the target but do produce a large AB if the location of the mask is changed. The data suggest that new object onsets reduce conscious access to unattended targets.

Response Inhibition in Tic Disorders: Waiting to Respond Is Harder When ADHD Is Present.

OBJECTIVE: Tic disorders such as Gilles-de-la-Tourette syndrome (TS) are associated with difficulties in withholding movements and sometimes inappropriate actions. The present study examined whether these disorders lead to a specific difficulty in withholding preprogrammed voluntary movements irrespective of decisions on whether or not to move. METHOD: Children with TS with or without attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and controls performed a fast-paced simple reaction time task involving responses to a target in a rapid letter stream (9 letters/s, average foreperiod 332 ms) with feedback on response speed. RESULTS: The ADHD group showed more premature responses and more variable response time than other groups, whether the timing of the target was predictable or not. CONCLUSION: The data indicate that in tic disorders, the presence of ADHD is associated with difficulties in waiting to initiate preprogrammed movements independently of response selection or response timing difficulties.