Journal
REMOTE SENSING
Volume 6, Issue 11, Pages 10966-10985Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/rs61110966
Keywords
soil moisture; remote sensing; microwave/optical synergistic methodology; vegetated area; Integral Equation Method (IEM); Water Cloud Model (WCM)
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Funding
- Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities [ZYGX2012Z005]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41471293]
- National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China [2013AA12A302]
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This paper presents a microwave/optical synergistic methodology to retrieve soil moisture in an alpine prairie. The methodology adequately represents the scattering behavior of the vegetation-covered area by defining the scattering of the vegetation and the soil below. The Integral Equation Method (IEM) was employed to determine the backscattering of the underlying soil. The modified Water Cloud Model (WCM) was used to reduce the effect of vegetation. Vegetation coverage, which can be easily derived from optical data, was incorporated in this method to account for the vegetation gap information. Then, an inversion scheme of soil moisture was developed that made use of the dual polarizations (HH and VV) available from the quad polarization Radarsat-2 data. The method developed in this study was assessed by comparing the reproduction of the backscattering, which was calculated from an area with full vegetation cover to that with relatively sparse cover. The accuracy and sources of error in this soil moisture retrieval method were evaluated. The results showed a good correlation between the measured and estimated soil moisture (R-2 = 0.71, RMSE = 3.32 vol.%, p < 0.01). Therefore, this method has operational potential for estimating soil moisture under the vegetated area of an alpine prairie.
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