PBO-H2O: GPS Sensing of Variability in Snow, Vegetation, and Soil Moisture in the Western United States

The Global Positioning System (GPS) continuously transmits L-band signals that are increasingly being used for a broad and diverse range of applications, including but not limited to vehicle navigation, precision agriculture, and recreation. High precision applications of these signals include their use in radio occultation, atmospheric water vapor retrievals, and plate tectonics. We describe a new application of these signals that is based upon a composite of the direct GPS signal and one that reflects off the ground. The interference pattern produced from these two signals can be used to derive snow depth, changes in vegetation water content, and soil moisture. This presentation describes a new set of data products that are produced with data collected from the Earthscope Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO).