ņSTIMATION OF SOIL MOISTURE DYNAMICS USING A RECURRENT DYNAMIC
LEARNING NEURAL NETWORK
Y. C. Tzeng1, K. T. Fan1, C. Y. Lin1, Y. J. Lee1, and K. S. Chen2
1
Department of Electronic Engineering, National United University, Maio-Li, Taiwan
john@nuu.edu.tw
2
Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan
dkschen@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw
ABSTRACT
Knowing the temporal features of soil moisture dynamics is
essential for proper water resource management,
fertilization management, and crop production. This paper
proposes a recurrent dynamic learning neural network
(RDLNN) to estimate soil moisture evolution by rainfall
forcing. Long-term measurements of rainfall and soil
moisture content were gathered. Soil moisture contents
estimated from daily and/or hourly precipitation by RDLNN,
were compared with ground measurements. Experimental
results suggested that RDLNN is a promising tool for
estimating soil moisture from hourly precipitation.
Index Terms—soil moisture, recurrent dynamic
learning neural network
1. INTRODUCTION
Soil moisture, the water content in the upper layer of soil, is
a very important parameter that controls the interactions
between land surface and atmospheric process. Knowing the
spatial and temporal features of soil moisture dynamics is
essential for proper water resource management,
fertilization management, and crop production [1]. The
space-time characteristics of soil moisture are mainly
governed by rainfall distribution, soil texture, vegetation
cover, and land surface topography [2]. It has been shown
that the impact of rainfall on the spatial variability of the
soil moisture field is limited to the period of raining [3]. The
problem becomes one-dimensional in time by assuming that
the change of average land surface condition does not alter
its spatial variability [4]. Therefore, the temporal soil
moisture dynamics can be modeled by a recurrent neural
network. A recurrent neural network has at least one
feedback loop which results in a nonlinear dynamical
behavior. The application of feedback enables recurrent
networks to acquire state representations, which make them
suitable devices for such applications as nonlinear
estimation and modeling [5].
978-1-4673-1159-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 1251
2. THE PROPOSED APPROACH
MODIS provides daily observations of the land surface
temperature (LST) and normalized difference vegetation
index (NDVI) over the Earth. Carlson et al. [6] proposed a
regression model to estimate soil moisture content from
NDVI and LST
m m
s ¦ ¦ aij NDVI *(i ) LST *( j ) (1)
i 0j 0
where aij is the coefficient to be determined by regressing
the ground measurements and NDVI* and LST* is the scaled
NDVI and LST, correspondingly. The scaled NDVI and
LST can be obtained by
NDVI  NDVI min
NDVI * (2)
NDVI max  NDVI min
LST  LSTmin
LST * (3)
LSTmax  LSTmin
where NDVImax and NDVImin is the maximum and minimum
value of NDVI, respectively, and LSTmax and LSTmin is the
maximum and minimum value of LST, individually.
However, the soil moisture content derived from MODIS
data only represents its value at the instantaneous time of
acquisition. It is impossible to model the temporal soil
moisture dynamics by using MODIS data alone. Entekhabi
and Rodriguez-Iturbe [7] proposed a simple zero-
dimensional soil moisture dynamics model by adopting the
linear reservoir concept and considering the diffusion effect
on the soil moisture propagation. The model is expressed in
a linear stochastic partial differential equation
ws
nZ r Ks  nZ r (N’ 2 s)  P (4)
wt
where P is the rainfall intensity, n is the soil porosity, Zr is
the depth of the soil top layer, N is the diffusion coefficient,
and K is the loss coefficient. The variation in soil moisture
content is caused by rainfall continuously in time and space
IGARSS 2012
and is assumed to be spread out in space by a diffusion
process. The problem becomes one-dimensional in time by
assuming that the change of average land surface condition
does not alter its spatial variability. Therefore, estimation of
soil moisture content can be achieved by reconstructing its
temporal dynamics from a time series of measurements
st 
As a demonstration, temporal profiles of rainfall (lower) and
soil moisture content (upper) both measured from 5/22
through 5/31 in 2009 were illustrated in Fig. 2. It was
shown that, within hours, the soil moisture content raised as
rainfall began and dropped as rainfall stopped. Therefore, it
is proper to model the temporal soil moisture dynamics at
hourly basis.
f Pt , Pt 1 ,", Pt  p , st 1 ,", st  q 
in which t indicates t-th the time step, f is a mapping
function which responds temporally to an externally applied
input signal and p and q is the correlation length in time of
rainfall and soil moisture content, respectively.
Pt
Pt-1
st
…
Delay Line
Pt-p
DLNN
st-q
…
Delay Line
st-1
Fig. 1. Architecture of the recurrent dynamic learning neural
network (RDLNN).
In this study, RDLNN is proposed to realize the input-
output relationship represented in Eq. (5). As shown Fig. 1,
the RDLNN is constructed by using the dynamic learning
neural network (DLNN) [8], a feed forward neural network,
as a building block. The architecture of the RDLNN can be
modeled by an input-output recurrent model. The input
space of the RDLNN is mapped onto an output space. The
input (rainfall) is applied to a tapped-delay-line memory of
p units and its output (soil moisture content) is fed back to
the input via another tapped-delay-line memory of q units.
The measured input is denoted by Pt, and the corresponding
value of the estimated output is denoted by st.
3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Long-term measurements of rainfall and soil moisture
content in Taiwan were gathered continuously. By
regressing the ground measurements of soil moisture
contents acquired on April and May in 2011 and the
corresponding MODIS data (NDVI and LST), the
coefficients in Eq. (1) are listed as烉a00 =12.481, a01 =-
13.391, a02 =18.539, a10 =42.098, a11 =-26.445, a12 =24.358,
a20 =-35.237, a21 =22.715, and a22 =32.507ˤ
The impact of rainfall on the temporal soil moisture
variability was investigated to determine the correlation
lengths p and q. The RDLNN was configured accordingly.
(5)
Fig. 2. Temporal profiles of rainfall (lower) and soil
moisture content (upper).
Both Daily and hourly measurements were prepared. For
daily and hourly measurements, individually, about 60% of
the whole data set was selected randomly as training
samples. Both the correlation lengths p and q were set to be
1 (day and/or hour). The initial value of the soil moisture
content was derived from MODIS data. The RDLNN was
trained by applying the training samples. Then, the trained
RDLNN was applied to estimate daily and/ or hourly soil
moisture content. The soil moisture content was estimated
from 4/1 through 5/31 in 2011. The estimated soil moisture
evolution was assessed.
A comparison between estimated results and ground
measurements was given in Fig. 3. It was shown that
measured soil moisture content got higher as precipitation
increased. The soil moisture content was also estimated
from MODIS data according to Eq. (1). The increasing of
precipitation did not reflect noticeably on the soil moisture
content estimated from MODIS data. On the other hand, the
increasing of precipitation did reflect on the soil moisture
content estimated from daily and/or hourly precipitation by
RDLNN. Poor estimating of the soil moisture content form
daily precipitation was observed, because that the rain fell at
different time in a day resulted in the same soil moisture
content estimation. A satisfactory result was obtained for
estimating of the soil moisture content form hourly
precipitation.
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 surface soil water content and fractional vegetation cover,” Remote
Sensing Reviews, Vol. 9, pp. 161-173, 1994.

[7] D. Entekhabi and I. Rodriguez-Iturbe, “Analytical Framework

for the Characterization of the Time-space Variability of Soil
Moisture,” Advance in Water Resources, Vol. 17, pp. 35-45, 1994.

[8] Y. C. Tzeng, K. S. Chen, W. L. Kao, and A. K. Fung, “A

Dynamic Learning Neural Network for Remote Sensing
Applications,” IEEE Transaction on Geoscience and Remote
Sensing, Vol. 32, pp. 1096-1102, 1994.

Fig. 3. Comparison between estimated results and ground

measurements.

4. CONCLUSIONS

A recurrent dynamic learning neural network (RDLNN) was

proposed to model the temporal soil moisture dynamics.
The initial value of the soil moisture content was derived
from MODIS data. Hourly measurements were applied to
estimate soil moisture evolution by rainfall forcing.
Experimental results suggested that RDLNN is a promising
tool for estimating soil moisture from hourly precipitation.

REFERENCES

[1] G. Liu, and J. Zhang, “Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Soil

Moisture after Rainfall Events along a Slope in Regosols of
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2784, 2007.

[2] C. Yoo, S. J. Kim, and J. S. Lee, “Sensitivity of Soil Moisture

Field Evolution to Rainfall Forcing,” Hydrological Processes, Vol.
19, pp. 1855-1869, 2005.

[3] C. Yoo, S. J. Kim, and J. S. Lee, “Land Cover Change and its
Impact onSoil-moisture-field Evolution,” ASCE Journal of
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[4] J. D. Albertson, and N. Montaldo, “Temporal Dynamics of Soil

Moisture Variability: 1 Theoretical Basis,” Water Resources
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[5] J. L. Elman, “Finding Structure in Time,” Cognitive Science,

Vol. 14, pp. 179-211, 1990.

[6] T. Carlson, R. Gillies, and E. Perry, “A method to make use of

thermal infrared temperature and NDVI measurements to infer

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