Estimation of soil moisture using fully polarimetric PALSAR data

Soil moisture retrieval in the vegetated areas using the SAR data analysis is a very difficult task, because the surface scattering integrates from the core soil and volume scattering integrate from the vegetation area. Moreover, for the signal scattering two way attenuation is provided by the vegetation from the soil. Therefore, an approach is required for retrieval of soil moisture which can minimize the vegetation effects. Various models are available to retrieve the soil moisture with SAR data. These models are either very complex or needs a lot of apriori information. Therefore, in this paper, Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI) is selected which is one of the important polarimetric parameter and gives the information about vegetation. So, RVI is used to minimize vegetation scattering from vegetated areas and estimate the soil moisture under vegetation cover. It is observed that use of RVI is giving quite encouraging results for retrieval of soil moisture in vegetated area.