Influence of surface roughness spatial variability and temporal dynamics on the retrieval of soil moisture from SAR observations
Radar-based surface soil moisture retrieval has been subject of intense research during the last decades. However, several difficulties hamper the operational estimation of soil moisture based on currently available spaceborne sensors. The main difficulty experienced so far results from the strong i...
| Autores: | , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2009 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Pública de Navarra |
| Repositorio: | Academica-e. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad Pública de Navarra |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:academica-e.unavarra.es:2454/10531 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2454/10531 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Synthetic aperture radar Soil moisture retrieval Surface roughness Remotely sensed data Bare soils C-band Backscattering model Neural networks Profile length Scattering Scale Water |
| Sumario: | Radar-based surface soil moisture retrieval has been subject of intense research during the last decades. However, several difficulties hamper the operational estimation of soil moisture based on currently available spaceborne sensors. The main difficulty experienced so far results from the strong influence of other surface characteristics, mainly roughness, on the backscattering coefficient, which hinders the soil moisture inversion. This is especially true for single configuration observations where the solution to the surface backscattering problem is ill-posed. Over agricultural areas cultivated with winter cereal crops, roughness can be assumed to remain constant along the growing cycle allowing the use of simplified approaches that facilitate the estimation of the moisture content of soils. However, the field scale spatial variability and temporal variations of roughness can introduce errors in the estimation of soil moisture that are difficult to evaluate. The objective of this study is to assess the impact of roughness spatial variability and roughness temporal variations on the retrieval of soil moisture from radar observations. A series of laser profilometer measurements were performed over several fields in an experimental watershed from September 2004 to March 2005. The influence of the observed roughness variability and its temporal variations on the retrieval of soil moisture is studied using simulations performed with the Integral Equation Model, considering different sensor configurations. Results show that both field scale roughness spatial variability and its temporal variations are aspects that need to be taken into account, since they can introduce large errors on the retrieved soil moisture values. |
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