Title :
Using polarimetric sar data to infer soil moisture from surfaces with varying subsurface moisture profiles
Author :
Khankhoje, Uday K. ; Van Zyl, Jakob ; Kim, Yunjin ; Cwik, Thomas
Author_Institution :
Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA
Abstract :
A time-series approach is used to estimate the moisture content based on polarimetric SAR data. It is found that under the assumption of constant soil moisture, empirically observed relationships between radar backscatter and moisture are only half as sensitive to moisture as compared to actual radar data. A numerical finite element method is used to calculate the radar backscatter for rough soils with arbitrarily varying soil moisture as a function of depth. Several instance of drying and wetting moisture profiles are considered and the radar backscatter is calculated in each case. Radar backscatter is found to crucially depend on the soil moisture variation in the top half wavelength of soil.
Keywords :
backscatter; moisture; radar polarimetry; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; time series; polarimetric SAR data; radar backscatter; soil moisture; subsurface moisture profile; time series; Backscatter; Moisture; Radar; Rough surfaces; Soil moisture; Surface roughness; Finite element methods; Monte Carlo simulations; electromagnetic scattering by rough surfaces; subsurface sensing;
Conference_Titel :
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International
Conference_Location :
Munich
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1160-1
Electronic_ISBN :
2153-6996
DOI :
10.1109/IGARSS.2012.6351261