Dielectric Properties of Saline Soils and an Improved Dielectric Model in C-Band

To retrieve the soil salinity by microwave remote sensing, we must clarify the relation of dielectric properties of saline soils with soil salinity. The objective of this paper was to determine how dielectric properties are affected by soil salinity in the remote sensing range and develop an improved model applying for the saline soil. Laboratory measurements of dielectric constant are made with a microwave vector network analyzer using soil mixture samples of various soil moistures and salinities prepared artificially from natural soils. The results confirmed that the real part is strongly affected by soil moisture, whereas the imaginary part depends on both the soil moisture and salinity, particularly at lower frequencies (1-6 GHz). Thus, as a key factor, soil salinity is introduced into the expression of the imaginary part of dielectric constant in the Dobson semiempirical dielectric mixing model, combining the dielectric model for saline water and the impact of electrical conductivity of soil solution. The improved model yields results, which are in good agreement with the laboratory measurements, the slopes of fitting curves between measurements and simulation nearly being equal to 1, and coefficient R² are higher than 0.89. In addition, the improve model is independent of soil-texture parameters. However, it should be noted that the improved model can be applied only to the C-band remote sensing.