Composite effect of crop (wheat) on microwave (X-band) for remote sensing

This paper deals with the study of microwave scattering from narrow leaf crop (wheat) and crop covered moist soil for remote sensing. Monitoring soil and vegetation biophysical status on regional and global scales is of paramount importance for understanding and protecting the environment as well as for management of natural resources. For this purpose, the potential of remote sensing techniques are also recognised. The knowledge of the target characteristic must be known through the ground base remote sensing, In this paper, the crop (wheat) covered moist soil (SM), plant height (PH), leaf area index (LAI), percentage biomass (BIO), and total chlorophyll (TC) have been taken as targets. Wheat is botanically considered as a narrow leaf crop. Its bed was specially prepared for the microwave scattering measurements. Using a bistatic scatterometer, several observations were carried out for various growth stages of the crop, which lead to the study of the crop signature. The emissivity (e) has been computed from the collected data and its effect on PH, SM, LAI, BIO, TC have been analysed. The effect of (e) gives a linear relationship on SM. The results obtained from the empirical model have been compared with the experimentally observed values. It is observed for both like polarisation that the value of (e) decreases as the SM increases.