School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Ph.D. Thesis Defense Announcement
ADVANCING GLOBAL ECO-HYDROLOGICAL MONITORING: AN INTEGRATED PHYSICAL MODELING FRAMEWORK FOR MULTI-SENSOR REMOTE SENSING
By: Kyeungwoo Cho
SEB 122
https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/29605540773959?p=jXeeOpEq9oF8aZVsVa
2026-11-19 2:00 PM EST
Rafael Bras, Aris Georgakakos, Yi Deng, Robinson Negron-Juarez
Passive microwave remote sensing provides extensive spatial coverage of terrestrial water dynamics, yet accurate retrieval of hydrological variables remains challenging because of the complex interactions among soil, vegetation, and snow within observed microwave signals. This dissertation investigates a unified physical modeling framework based on the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle to improve the interpretation of microwave observations across diverse terrestrial environments. Integrating radiative transfer theory with thermodynamically constrained energy partitioning, the MEP framework enables the simultaneous retrieval of soil moisture (SM) and vegetation water content (VWC). Evaluations across diverse ecosystems demonstrate strong agreement between retrieved SM and ground observations, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.74 to 0.91 at three Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) core validation sites. Further applications reveal seasonal relationships between satellite-derived VWC and live fuel moisture content in the western United States, while analyses of the 2023–2024 Amazon drought identify widespread soil moisture deficits accompanied by spatially heterogeneous vegetation responses. An extension of the framework to a coupled snow and soil system further demonstrates the potential for estimating snow water equivalent (SWE) from microwave observations at multiple frequencies, although retrieval performance depends on prescribed snow properties and calibrated model parameters. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of MEP-based retrievals and establish a physically interpretable foundation for integrated monitoring of terrestrial water dynamics across multiple satellite sensors.