Impact of Vegetation Gradient and Land Cover Conditions on Soil Moisture Retrievals From Different Frequencies and Acquisition Times of AMSR2

Spaceborne remote sensing provides great potential for soil moisture (SM) retrieval and emerged as a significant data source for research in land surface dynamics and associated applications. This study compared the error characteristics of SM estimates retrieved from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) instrument on board National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Aqua satellite across different vegetation gradients and land cover conditions, at different overpass times and frequencies, to demonstrate their strengths and limitations. The results demonstrate that AMSR2 C-band products outperform AMSR2 X-band products over moderately and densely vegetated conditions due to lower attenuation by the vegetation canopy. Conversely, X-band products performed better than C-band products in barren lands possibly due to uneven sensing depth and microwave emissions from subsurface in C-band. The daytime products have a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in sparsely and moderately vegetated areas, whereas nighttime products have a higher SNR in densely vegetated areas. When these products are used selectively based on their error characteristics, the probability of obtaining SM with stronger signal than noise can be significantly improved (95%) at the expense of impaired spatial coverage (70% pixel loss).