Segmentation of polarimetric AIRSAR-Data and SIR-C/X-SAR-Data for soil moisture determination in an agricultural area

A segmentation method is described that takes care of the special characteristics of polarimetric AIRSAR and SIR-C/X-SAR data. These data have been acquired during the 1989 AIRSAR campaign, the MAC-Europe campaign 1991 near Oberpfaffenhofen in Bavaria and during the SIR-C/X-SAR campaign on the Island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea, Germany. It is the aim to develop a segmentation method that allows the delineation of agricultural areas with similar soil water content. These are needed for the spatial verification of hydrological models. Groundtruth data comprise soil moisture measurements using TDR probes with a length of 10 and 15 cm, and 500 cm³ core samples. Surface roughness was measured using 2 m profiles with 10 cm increments, a 10 cm by 10 cm grid and a laser profilometer. A digital landuse map together with soil information is used for verification purposes. Soil survey of representative catenas together with core samples for soil physical laboratory analyses (grain size distribution, unsaturated hydraulic conductivity and soil bulk density) complete the analyses