SMOSAR algorithm for soil moisture retrieval using Sentinel-1 data

This paper describes and assesses the quality of the algorithm, “Soil MOisture retrieval from multi-temporal SAR data” (SMOSAR), developed in view of the forthcoming European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-1 (S-1) mission. SMOSAR retrieves soil moisture (m_v) products at high spatial resolution (i.e. less than 1km) from dense time series of either single (i.e. HH or VV) or dual polarized (i.e. HH+HV or VV+VH) S-1 data. The assessment of the algorithm performance is based on time series of ENVISAT/ASAR data collected over the DEMMIN site (Germany) in 2006 and over the Matera site (Italy) in 2003 and 2005 and RADARSAT-2 data acquired over the Flevoland site (The Netherlands) in 2009. Results indicate that m_v can be retrieved with an accuracy of 5% at HH polarization, whereas at VV polarization more investigations are required to provide reliable figure for the retrievable accuracy.