Soil moisture monitoring based on HJ-1C S-band SAR image and experimental data

The paper proposed a soil moisture retrieval model with S-band field experimental data and volumetric water content measured in field. Focused on the problem that antenna irradiated region may not meet the minimum radar resolution pixel, the research applied the multiple independent samples measuring method and analyzed the relevance between soil moisture and backscattering coefficient of S-band VV polarization. The inversion equation obtained was applied to inverse soil moisture from SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) S-band images of HJ-1C (a satellite designed for environment and disaster monitoring). The inversion results were verified by the multiple independent samples data measured and agreed well with the experimental data, which shows the S-band VV polarization data can be used to monitor the soil moisture in a large scale.