Live fuel moisture content estimates in the Western USA using radiometer-radar-lidar synergy

Publication: Chaparro et al. (2024) This dataset contains estimates of Live Fuel Moisture Content (LFMC) in the Western United States. LFMC is the percentage of vegetation water mass over the dry biomass of the plants. Here, LFMC is retrieved by isolating the water component of the passive microwaves vegetation optical depth (VOD) signal at three frequencies: L-band (1.4 GHz), X-band (10.65 GHz) and Ku-band (18.7 GHz). Each frequency represents a different canopy sensing depth. To isolate LFMC from VOD, auxiliary information to account for the biomass and structure of the vegetation has been used: radar backscatter data from Sentinel-1 and canopy height data from GEDI/Sentinel-2. The dataset spans between April 2015 and December 2018 for L- and X-bands, and between April 2015 and July 2018 for Ku-band retrievals. Details: Period: April 2015 - December 2018 (daily resolution) Gridding: 0.25º Grid type: lat/lon Size: 73 (lat) x 104 (lon) x 1371 (time)