Application of Microwave Data for Agriculture Area

The study was carried out for agricultural area in Poland for the years 2003-2007. The aim of the project was to examine the impact of soil-vegetation parameters on backscatter calculated from ENVISAT.ASAR under various polarizations and incidence angles. The extensive field measurements have been carried out simultaneously to satellite overpasses. Additionally to microwave acquisitions the optical data from TERRA.ASTER satellite have been used to distinguish different crop types. There has been applied two approaches: (1) for each of the class the equations for calculation of LAI and soil moisture from microwave data have been derived using statistical analyses, and the maps of LAI and soil moisture have been presented; (2) the semi empirical water-cloud model has been applied to describe the contribution of soil moisture and winter wheat descriptor as LAI on backscattering coefficient. The results show that presented methods can be implemented into monitoring of crop growth.