Principal Investigator Dara Entekhabi
Project Website http://watercycle.mit.edu/
search in Entekhabi Group spans a variety of topics in hydrology, including land-atmosphere interactions, surface water -- groundwater interactions, data assimilation, and remote sensing. Research covers both the areas of hydrometeorology and hydroclimatology. Recent projects have focused on land-atmosphere boundary layer estimation, remote sensing of precipitation and soil moisture, wintertime climate dynamics, designing and validating ground-based networks and urban canyon air flow.
Dara Entekhabi is the science team leader for the NASA Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) satellite that will be launched in 2014. SMAP will measure soil moisture and soil freeze/thaw status using two instruments: a radar and a radiometer. The former has a higher resolution and the latter has more accuracy in measuring soil moisture. Several members of his research group are contributing to the development of the retrieval algorithms for the radar instrument, and for the flagship SMAP soil moisture product that will optimally combine radar and radiometer measurements.