Modified Scattering Decomposition for Soil Moisture Estimation from Polarimetric X-Band Data

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Abstract

Soil moisture content represents a key observable in order to model, describe and predict many ecological processes. In the last decades, theoretical and empirical inversion algorithms for soil moisture estimation using PolSAR data at L- and P-band have been intensively investigated, and, meanwhile, there exist innovative techniques for the quantitative retrieval of dielectric constant of the soil [1]. In this project work, the potential of estimating soil moisture from fully polarimetric X-band SAR data is investigated for the first time. Due to the short wavelength, the Physical Optics model has been chosen for the scattering process representation [2] and a model-based decomposition approach has been used to exploit the polarimetric observable space. For appropriate modelling of the very strong cross-polarization contribution of X-band waves, which are scattered by even very small objects, corrections of the volume scattering contribution were implemented. In order to improve the retrieval of the moisture content, the developed polarimetric decomposition has been further modified by means of an eigen-analysis of the coherency matrix. The SAR data were acquired by the German satellite TerraSAR-X over the agricultural area of Wallerfing (Lower Bavaria, Germany) in April/May 2009. A validation of the proposed approaches for a quality assessment has been performed by comparing the estimated moisture values with in situ measurements collected in collaboration with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München.

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• Modified Scattering Decomposition for Soil Moisture Estimation from Polarimetric X-Band Data. (deposited 26 Mar 2010 17:33) [Currently Displayed]