Enhancing Spatiotemporal Resolution of MCCA SMAP Soil Moisture Products over China: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning-Based Downscaling Approaches

As a key parameter of the Earth’s ecosystem, soil moisture significantly influences land-atmosphere interactions and has important applications in meteorology, hydrology, and agricultural studies. However, existing passive microwave remote sensing products of soil moisture are limited by their discontinuous temporal coverage and relatively coarse spatial resolution (typically 25–55 km), which cannot meet the requirements for fine-scale applications. This study developed and compared four machine learning-based downscaling approaches to improve the spatiotemporal resolution of MCCA SMAP soil moisture products. The methodology involved establishing complex nonlinear relationships between soil moisture and various high-resolution surface parameters including albedo, evapotranspiration, precipitation, and soil properties. High-resolution soil moisture maps were generated by leveraging the scale-invariant characteristics between soil moisture and surface parameters, followed by comprehensive evaluation using in situ ground observations and triple collocation analysis. The results demonstrated that all downscaling models showed excellent consistency with original MCCA SMAP observations (R > 0.93, RMSE < 0.033 m3 m−3), while successfully providing enhanced spatial details. The Random Forest (RF) model exhibited superior performance, showing higher correlation coefficients and lower biases when compared with in situ measurements. Uncertainty analysis revealed relatively low uncertainty levels for all models except Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN) model. The RF-downscaled products accurately tracked temporal variations of soil moisture and showed good responsiveness to precipitation patterns, demonstrating their potential for fine-scale hydrological applications and regional environmental monitoring.