Field Measurements and Satellite Remote Sensing of Daily Soil Surface Temperature Variations in the Lower Colorado Desert of California

The purpose of this study was to better understand the relationships between diurnal variations of air temperature measured hourly at the soil surface, compared with the thermal infra-red (TIR) emission properties of soil surfaces located in the Lower Colorado Desert of California, eastern Riverside County. Fifty air temperature loggers were deployed in January of 2017 on wooden stakes that were driven into the sandy or rocky desert soils at both Ford Dry Lake and the southern McCoy Mountains wash. The land surface temperature (LST) derived from Landsat satellite images was compared to measured air temperatures at 1 m and at the soil surface on 14 separate dates, until mid-September, 2017. Results showed that it is feasible to derive estimated temperatures at the soil surface from hourly air temperatures, recorded at 1 m above the surface (ambient). The study further correlated Landsat LST closely with site measurements of air and surface temperatures in these solar energy development zones of southern California, allowing inter-conversion with ground-based measurements for use in ecosystem change and animal population biology studies