An Extension of the Alpha Approximation Method for Soil Moisture Estimation Using Time-Series SAR Data Over Bare Soil Surfaces

The objective of this letter is to extend the alpha approximation method, a method proposed by Balenzano et al., for soil moisture retrieval from multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. The original alpha approach requires an initial estimate of the upper and lower bound soil moisture values to constrain the soil moisture retrieval. This letter demonstrates an extension of the alpha approach by employing the juxtaposition method to adaptively set the soil moisture bounds using the absolute radar backscatter values. This extended alpha method was tested using an airborne time series of L-band SAR data and coincident ground measurements acquired during the SMAPEx-3 experiment over bare agricultural fields. The agreement between estimated and measured soil moisture values was within a rootmean-square error of 0.07 cm(3)/cm(3) for each of the three polarization combinations used (i.e., HH, VV, and HH and VV). Moreover, inclusion of the two-polarization combination (HH and VV) slightly improved the retrieval performance. The proposed extension to the alpha method makes the most of the information contained in the SAR data time series by using dynamic, spatially explicit soil moisture bounds retrieved from the SAR data themselves.