@article {bnh-6927,
	title = {JASMIN: A prototype high resolution soil moisture analysis system for Australia},
	year = {2017},
	month = {10/2017},
	institution = {Bureau of Meterology},
	address = {Canberra},
	abstract = {<p>Accurate soil dryness information is essential for the calculation of accurate fire danger ratings, fire behavior prediction, flood forecasting and landslip warnings. Soil dryness also strongly influences temperatures and heatwave development by controlling the partitioning of net surface radiation into sensible, latent and ground heat fluxes. Rainfall forecasts are crucial for many applications and many studies suggest that soil dryness can significantly influence rainfall. Currently, soil dryness for fire danger prediction in Australia is estimated using very simple water balance models developed in the 1960s that ignore many important factors such as incident solar radiation, soil types, vegetation height and root depth. This work presents a prototype high resolution soil moisture analysis system based around the Joint UK Land Environment System (JULES) land surface model. This prototype system is called the JULES based Australian Soil Moisture INformation (JASMIN) system. The JASMIN system can include data from many sources; such as surface observations of rainfall, temperature, dew-point temperature, wind speed, surface pressure as well as satellite derived measurements of rainfall, surface soil moisture, downward surface short-wave radiation, skin temperature, leaf area index and tree heights. The JASMIN system estimates soil moisture on four soil layers over the top 3 meters of soil, the surface layer has a thickness of 10 cm. The system takes into account the effect of different vegetation types, root depth, stomatal resistance and spatially varying soil texture. The analysis system has a one hour time-step with daily updating. For the surface soil layer, verification against ground based soil moisture observations from the OzNet, CosmOz and OzFlux networks shows that the JASMIN system is significantly more accurate than other soil moisture analysis system used at the Bureau of Meteorology. For the root-zone, the JASMIN system has similar skill to other commonly used soil moisture analysis systems. The Extended Triple Collocation (ETC) verification method also confirms the high skill of the JASMIN system.</p>},
	keywords = {Fire behaviour, fire danger ratings, flood forecast, soil dryness},
	issn = { Bureau Research Report {\textendash} BRR026},
	url = {http://www.bom.gov.au/research/publications/researchreports/BRR-026.pdf},
	author = {Imtiaz Dharssi and Vinod Kumar}
}
@article {bnh-6928,
	title = {Sources of soil dryness measures and forecasts for fire danger rating },
	year = {2015},
	month = {12/2015},
	institution = {Bureau of Meteorology },
	address = {Canberra},
	abstract = {<p>The fuel availability estimates in McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index used in Australia for issuing operational fire warnings is based on soil moisture deficit, calculated as either the Keetch{\textendash}Byram Drought Index (KBDI) or Mount{\textquoteright}s Soil Dryness Index (MSDI). These indices are essentially simplified, empirical water balance models designed to estimate soil moisture depletion in the upper soil levels. These two models over-simplify processes like evapotranspiration and runoff which can lead to large uncertainties in the predicted soil moisture deficit. With advancements in the science of soil moisture measurement and modelling, better products are available for use in fire danger ratings. As such, a detailed review of the established and emerging soil moisture estimation techniques becomes necessary. With this in view, efforts have been made in this paper to discuss various soil moisture estimation methods, their advantages and limitations in a fire danger rating context. The discussion is not intended to be complete and reflect the authors{\textquoteright} interests, but we hope that it helps to highlight the soil moisture data sources that may not be well known outside the hydrological community, especially the people in fire management.</p>},
	keywords = {fire management, Forecasting, forest fire danger index, fuel, soil dryness},
	isbn = {978-0-642-70672-0},
	issn = {Bureau Research Report - BRR009},
	url = {http://www.bom.gov.au/research/publications/researchreports/BRR-009.pdf},
	author = {Vinod Kumar and Imtiaz Dharssi}
}
