Influence of Radar Frequency on the Relationship Between Bare Surface Soil Moisture Vertical Profile and Radar Backscatter

Author

Zribi, Mehrez ; Gorrab, Azza ; Baghdadi, Nicolas ; Lili-Chabaane, Zohra ; Mougenot, Bernard

Author_Institution

Centre d´Etudes Spatiales de la BIOsphere, Univ. Paul Sabatier (UPS), Toulouse, France

Volume

11

Issue

4

fYear

2014

fDate

Apr-14

Firstpage

848

Lastpage

852

Abstract

The aim of this letter is to discuss the influence of radar frequency on the relationship between surface soil moisture and the nature of radar backscatter over bare soils. In an attempt to address this issue, the advanced integral equation model was used to simulate backscatter from soil surfaces with various moisture vertical profiles, for three frequency bands, namely, L, C, and X. In these computations, we investigated the influence of the vertical heterogeneity of soil moisture on the characteristics of the backscattered signals. The influence of radar frequency is clearly demonstrated. A database produced from Envisat ASAR and TerraSAR-X data, which was acquired over bare soils with in situ measurements of moisture content and ground surface roughness, was used to validate the utility of taking the soil moisture heterogeneity into account in the backscatter model.

Keywords

backscatter; integral equations; remote sensing by radar; soil; bare surface soil moisture vertical profile; integral equation model; radar backscatter; radar frequency; vertical heterogeneity; Backscatter; Data models; Moisture; Radar; Soil measurements; Soil moisture; Advanced integral equation model (AIEM); bare soil; soil moisture profile; synthetic aperture radar;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2013.2279893

Filename

6606863