Short vegetation influence on surface parameter estimations

Several inversion models [1] estimate roughness and soil moisture of bare surfaces. In the case of vegetated areas, the soil moisture is underestimated by inversion algorithms due to the sensitivity of the polarimetric scattering to the vegetation. In order to estimate soil moisture under vegetation, this paper analyzes the influence of scattering through short plant layer at L- band for which the scattering is very sensitive to soil parameters. The potential to classify the short vegetation influence using the so-called Single and Double bounce Eigenvalue Relative Difference (SDERD) and the Luneburg randomness parameter pr [2], is addressed so as to observe. Moreover, the short vegetation backscattering is empirically modeled basing on the radiative transfer first order method [3]. The data used are at L-band from the airborne E-SAR system of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the testsite is the Ailing city in Germany.