Evaluation of Radar/Optical Based Vegetation Descriptors in Water Cloud Model for Soil Moisture Retrieval

The accurate consideration of vegetation descriptors in water cloud model (WCM) is necessary for precise SM retrieval. Most of the vegetation descriptors are sourced from optical remote sensors. The acquisitions from optical sensors are largely hampered by bad weather conditions. For all-weather monitoring, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) based vegetation descriptors are needed to identify and evaluate their performance for SM retrieval. The present study evaluates the various sources/combinations of SAR based vegetation descriptors in WCM to identify the better alternatives of optical-based vegetation descriptors. The performance of three radar-based vegetation descriptors, namely VH polarized backscattering coefficients, depolarization ratio and radar vegetation index (RVI) along with the one optical-based vegetation descriptor, namely leaf area index (LAI) from MODIS were utilized in WCM. The WCM for each vegetation descriptor has been performed using Sentinel-1 VV polarized backscattering coefficients and in-situ SM. The in-situ SM measurements were carried out in the fields around Varanasi District in India during the winter season sown with the wheat crop. The correlations coefficient (r), root mean square error (RMSE) and bias were used to evaluate the performances of vegetation descriptors in WCM for SM retrieval. The study showed that the depolarization ratio is the best for SM retrieval with accuracy of 0.096 m
³
m
^-3
followed by RVI, cross-polarized and LAI with 0.100 m
³
m
^-3
, 0.124 m
³
m
^-3
and 0.124 m
³
m
^-3
, respectively. Thus, the depolarization ratio can be used for the retrieval of SM using Sentinel-1 VV polarized backscattering coefficients over the wheat crop.