Monitoring crop biomass and soil moisture with airborne microwave radiometers

This paper presents the results obtained during the airborne IROE-STAAARTE campaign in 1997 on the agricultural site "Les Alpilles" (France). The radiometric measurements were carried out using the French airplane ARAT equipped with two microwave IROE radiometers at C- and X- bands (6.8 and 10 GHz) and one infrared sensor (8-14 micron). Using two frequency data it was possible to separate six vegetation classes of the whole area. The soil moisture of agricultural fields was estimated using the C-band normalized temperature, whilst the biomass of wheat was retrieved through the polarisation index at X-band.