ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING FROM A CORN CANOPY AT L AND C BANDS

Extraction of vegetation water content and soil moisture from microwave observations requires development of a high fidelity scattering model. A number of factors associated with the vegetation canopy and the underlying bare soil should be taken into account. In this paper, we propose an electromagnetic scattering model for a corn canopy which includes coherent effect due to the corn structure and takes advantage of recently advanced scattering models for dielectric cylinder of finite length, for thin dielectric disk with elliptical cross section, and for rough surface. The model results are validated at both L and C bands. At C band we acquired some RADARSAT-2 data of several test fields of corn canopy in Jiangsu Province, China, in 2009, and carried out simultaneous measurement campaigns to collect the in situ ground truth. A comparison is made between theory and RADARSAT-2 data. At L band because high quality AIRSAR measurement data are available along with detailed ground truth in the literature, a comparison is also made between theory and AIRSAR data.