Potential for High Resolution Systematic Global Surface Soil Moisture Retrieval via Change Detection Using Sentinel-1

Abstract

The forthcoming two-satellite GMES Sentinel-1 constellation is expected to render systematic surface soil moisture retrieval at 1 km resolution using C-band SAR data possible for the first time from space. Owing to the constellation’s foreseen coverage over the Sentinel-1 Land Masses acquisition region—global approximately every six days, nearly daily over Europe and Canada depending on latitude—in the high spatial and radiometric resolution Interferometric Wide Swath (IW) mode, the Sentinel-1 mission shows high potential for global monitoring of surface soil moisture by means of fully automatic retrieval techniques. This paper presents the potential for providing such a service systematically over Land Masses and in near real time using a change detection approach, concluding that such a service is—subject to the mission operating as foreseen—expected to be technically feasible. The work presented in this paper was carried out as a feasibility study within the framework of the ESA-funded GMES Sentinel-1 Soil Moisture Algorithm Development (S1-SMAD) project.