COSMO SkyMed AO projects -soil moisture detection for vegetation fields based on a modified water-cloud model using COSMO-SkyMed SAR data

In this study, we developed a soil moisture retrieval technique for vegetation fields using a modified water-cloud model. The water-cloud model has been a typical algorithm used to analyze scattering from vegetation fields for a long time, because it is simple to be used for retrieving a variety of information such as soil moisture and vegetation water mass. However, its accuracy has been questionable because the water-cloud model contains lots of approximations in the process of simplification. To improve the accuracy of the algorithm, we modified the water-cloud model with the estimation of parameters using a radiative transfer model. Soil moisture is retrieved from SAR images by the modified water-cloud model for vegetation fields and compared with in-situ measured ground truth data.