SOIL MOISTURE MAPPING USING SMOS APPLIED TO FLOOD MONITORING IN THE MOROCCAN CONTEXT

Abstract. Soil moisture is an important parameter in many fields: hydrological, agricultural and even natural hazards monitoring (like floods). And, since soil moisture is crucial to flood monitoring a soil moisture spatial mission was launched in the 2nd November 2009: Soil Moisture And Ocean Salinity (SMOS). In this context, two Moroccan flood events are considered: November 2014 floods at Guelmim and Sidi Ifni and 23rd February 2017 floods at Rabat and Salé. The methodology is based on the combination of the observation of two parameters: soil moisture (satellite data) and rainfall data (in-situ and satellite-based data) in order to have a vision of the flood risk in Morocco in the future with the comparison of Rainfall and soil moisture maps before and after the flood events. Among the main results, a strong relation between soil moisture and floods was detected for the November 2014 floods (for Guelmim soil moisture reached 0.6 m3/m3 on 20 and 21 November 2014) and between Rainfall amount and floods for the 23 February 2017 floods (119 mm on the day of the flood event).