Spatial and temporal mapping of soil moisture content with polarimetric RADARSAT 2 SAR imagery in the Alpine area

In this work, fully polarimetric RADARSAT2 SAR images and advanced feature extraction strategies are investigated for improving the retrieval of soil moisture content in Alpine meadows and pastures. More in detail, standard Intensity & Phase polarimetric features, polarimetric decompositions and general purpose feature extraction strategies are exploited in combination with a sequential forward selection to increase the accuracy of the system. The capability of the system to provide spatially and temporally distributed estimates of soil moisture is also addressed by using different satellite acquisitions. The achieved results indicate that the polarimetric information in the SAR data, if properly exploited, allows one to improve the estimation of soil moisture content in the investigated mountain area. Concerning the mapping of the target variable, the analysis of the results suggest that the proposed estimation system is promising and effectively maps the soil moisture status both in time and space.