Estimation of soil moisture and surface roughness parameters using L-band SAR measurements

Monitoring spatial and temporal changes of soil moisture are of importance to hydrology, meteorology, and agriculture. The paper reports the results of a study on using L-band SAR imagery to estimate soil moisture and surface roughness for bare fields. Due to limitations of the small perturbation model, it is difficult to apply this model for estimation of soil moisture and surface roughness directly. In the study, the authors show a simplified model derived from the integral equation model for estimation of soil moisture and surface roughness. They show a test of this model using SIR-C's and JPL/AIRSAR's L-band SAR image data.