RETRIEVAL OF SOIL MOISTURE AND SURFACE ROUGHNESS FROM POLARIMETRIC SAR IMAGES OF VEGETATED SURFACES

This paper presents soil moisture retrieval from measured polarimetric backscattering coefficients of a vegetated surface. Based on the analysis of the quite complicate first-order radiative transfer scattering model for vegetated surfaces, a simplified scattering model is proposed for an inversion algorithm. Extraction of the surface-scatter component from the total scattering of a vegetation canopy is addressed using the simplified model, and also using the three-component decomposition technique. The backscattering coefficients are measured with a polarimetric L-band scatterometer during two months. At the same time, the biomasses, leaf moisture contents, and soil moisture contents are also measured. Then the measurement data are used to estimate the model parameters for vv-, hh-, and vh-polarizations. The scattering model for tall-grass-covered surfaces is inverted to retrieve the soil moisture content from the measurements using a genetic algorithm. The retrieved soil moisture contents agree quite well with the in-situ measured soil moisture data.