Error in radar-derived soil moisture due to roughness parameterization: an analysis based on synthetical surface profiles

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Date
2009Version
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Type
Artículo / Artikulua
Version
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa
Impact
|
10.3390/s90201067
Abstract
In the past decades, many studies on soil moisture retrieval from SAR demonstrated a poor correlation between the top layer soil moisture content and observed backscatter coefficients, which mainly has been attributed to difficulties involved in the parameterization of surface roughness. The present paper describes a theoretical study, performed on synthetical surface profiles, which investig ...
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In the past decades, many studies on soil moisture retrieval from SAR demonstrated a poor correlation between the top layer soil moisture content and observed backscatter coefficients, which mainly has been attributed to difficulties involved in the parameterization of surface roughness. The present paper describes a theoretical study, performed on synthetical surface profiles, which investigates how errors on roughness parameters are introduced by standard measurement techniques, and how they will propagate through the commonly used Integral Equation Model (IEM) into a corresponding soil moisture retrieval error for some of the currently most used SAR configurations. Key aspects influencing the error on the roughness parameterization and consequently on soil moisture retrieval are: the length of the surface profile, the number of profile measurements, the horizontal and vertical accuracy of profile measurements and the removal of trends along profiles. Moreover, it is found that soil moisture retrieval with C-band configuration generally is less sensitive to inaccuracies in roughness parameterization than retrieval with L-band configuration. [--]
Subject
SAR,
Soil moisture,
Soil roughness parameterization,
Microwave dielectric behavior,
Aperture radar,
Bare soils,
Multi incidence,
Wet soils,
Data,
Retrieval,
Models,
Backscattering,
Scattering,
Chemistry,
Electrochemistry
Publisher
MDPI
Published in
Sensors, 2009, 9(2). Págs. 1067-1093
Departament
Universidad Pública de Navarra. Departamento de Proyectos e Ingeniería Rural /
Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa. Landa Ingeniaritza eta Proiektuak Saila
Publisher version
Sponsorship
The research presented in this paper is funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office in the frame of the Stereo II programme - project SR/00/100.
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2009 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)