Soil moisture assessment by an airborne scatterometer in Chernobyl disaster area and Negev Desert

The presented results demonstrate the use of airborne radar scatterometers flown aboard a light aircraft for environmental monitoring and precision agriculture. A good agreement between values measured in the field and estimated by the scatterometers has been found with some overestimation for the lower moisture sites. Furthermore, for a more temperate site in Ukraine the scatterometer was found to be very useful also in estimating the depth of the groundwater table. Alongside the scatterometer a gamma-ray radiometer was flown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster site. The ability to map soil moisture and water table depth in conjunction with gamma-ray radiometry is extremely useful in monitoring the after affects and the rehabilitation of the Chernobyl NPP disaster area. Due to deforestation caused by the Chernobyl disaster high levels of soil moisture can be hazardous themselves in creating swampland. This phenomenon can be monitored and mapped by airborne scatterometers