SAR and optical data utilization for soil moisture retrieval in vegetated region

This paper presents a fusion of information approach to retrieve the soil moisture in vegetated area with requirement of minimum apriori information. A normalization approach of scattering coefficient of vegetated area has been utilized so that normalized scattering coefficient becomes a function of vegetation only. The vegetation can also be modeled with NDVI, a vegetation index. An empirical relationship has been developed between normalized scattering coefficient and NDVI. This empirical relationship provides the scattering coefficient of bare soil which is inverted with Dubois model to retrieve volumetric soil moisture content.