利用红外遥感探测土壤水分早已被物理学家、气象学家及遥感工作者所重视。Abdel-Hady于本世纪七十年代初(1971)曾研究了粘土和沙土的温度最大变化与地下水深度的关系。稍后,Pohn等人(1974)发表了利用地球表面的热辐射传导模式来遥测土壤热惯量的文章,并指出,利用热红外图象和全色影象来探测地表热惯量是可能的。同年,Schmer和Werner(1974)通过野外试验建立了地表热辐射温度和土壤温 The use of infrared remote sensing to detect soil moisture has long been the focus of physicists, meteorologists and remote sensing workers. In the early 1970s (1971), Abdel-Hady studied the relationship between the maximum temperature change of clay and sand and groundwater depth. Later, Pohn et al. (1974) published an article using teleradiology of the Earth’s surface to telemetrically measure soil thermal inertia and pointed out that it is possible to detect surface thermal inertia using thermal infrared images and panchromatic images. In the same year, Schmer and Werner (1974) established field heat radiation and soil temperature