Soil moisture maps from time series of PALSAR-1 scansar data over Australia

This paper investigates the use of quasi-dense time-series of L-band SAR images for retrieving soil moisture (m_v) maps at a spatial resolution below 1km². 23 WB1 PALSAR-1 products, acquired from 2008 to 2009 with an average revisit time of 11 days, have been used to retrieve m_v maps over an agricultural area, in Southern Australia, hydrologically monitored with a network of ground stations continuously measuring m_v profiles. The retrieval approach is based on the SMOSAR algorithm inverting temporal changes of radar backscatter. Results indicate an rms error of approximately 6.0% v/v.