• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.229-241
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• 2024

With the advancement of big data processing technology using cloud platforms, access, processing, and analysis of large-volume data such as satellite imagery have recently been significantly improved. In this study, the Change Detection Method, a relatively simple technique for retrieving soil moisture, was applied to the backscattering coefficient values of pre-processed Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery product based on Google Earth Engine (GEE), one of those platforms, to estimate the surface soil moisture for six observatories within the Yongdam Dam watershed in South Korea for the period of 2015 to 2023, as well as the watershed average. Subsequently, a correlation analysis was conducted between the estimated values and actual measurements, along with an examination of the applicability of GEE. The results revealed that the surface soil moisture estimated for small areas within the soil moisture observatories of the watershed exhibited low correlations ranging from 0.1 to 0.3 for both VH and VV polarizations, likely due to the inherent measurement accuracy of the SAR satellite imagery and variations in data characteristics. However, the surface soil moisture average, which was derived by extracting the average SAR backscattering coefficient values for the entire watershed area and applying moving averages to mitigate data uncertainties and variability, exhibited significantly improved results at the level of 0.5. The results obtained from estimating soil moisture using GEE demonstrate its utility despite limitations in directly conducting desired analyses due to preprocessed SAR data. However, the efficient processing of extensive satellite imagery data allows for the estimation and evaluation of soil moisture over broad ranges, such as long-term watershed averages. This highlights the effectiveness of GEE in handling vast satellite imagery datasets to assess soil moisture. Based on this, it is anticipated that GEE can be effectively utilized to assess long-term variations of soil moisture average in major dam watersheds, in conjunction with soil moisture observation data from various locations across the country in the future.