Land applications of ERS-1 Wind Scatterometer in boreal forest zone

The feasibility of the ERS-1 Wind Scatterometer (WS) for land applications in the boreal forest zone was analyzed using data (1) from test areas located in Finland and (2) covering the European boreal forest zone. The results show that the ERS-1 Wind Scatterometer has potential for some applications: the monitoring of soil frost and the retrieval of soil moisture/vegetation water content. The major problem in the employment of the ERS-1 scatterometer for land applications is its poor spatial resolution (47 km). This paper will also address the problem of improving the spatial resolution of the ERS-1 scatterometer data. It is shown that a realistic figure for the improved resolution is 25 km.