Potential for phase-based surface moisture estimation with C-band SAR data

Kurzfassung

Soil moisture estimation with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is currently based on the amplitude of backscattered signal. However, there are evidences that soil or vegetation moisture can influence the SAR interferometric phase (InSAR), in fact, moisture effects are suspected to be a considerable nuisance when the goal is the precise estimation of ground deformation using InSAR. A moisture retrieval method based on the interferometric phase, both for improving ground deformation and surface moisture measurements, has in the past been presented and to some extend validated. In this paper we will show our first inversion results based on Sentinel-1 C-band images; we compare incoherent and coherent methods; we conclude that the possibility of integrating incoherent and coehrent soil moisture estimation is becoming realistic and should therefore be thoroughly investigated.