Estimation of soil moisture and debris pile volume from Pi-SAR2X and Pi-SAR-L2 square-flight data

Full polarimetric airborne SAR data acquired over the Tsunami affected coastal area in Northeastern Japan is used to estimate soil moisture and debris volumes. Using empirical surface roughness calibration of the I²EM soil moisture is estimated with a RMSE of 5.2 Vol.-%. The heights of Tsunami debris piles are estimated with a RMSE of 0.71 m by using a reference point aided stereo-SAR approach. Debris pile volumes are estimated with an overall RMSE of 2478 m³. The accuracy increases with increasing size of the piles. While the error ranges from 50% to 90% for the smallest piles, it is in the order of 20% to 30% for the large piles.