Relationship Between Retrievals of Surface Soil Moisture and Roughness Using SAR Data at L-Band

Abstract

Surface soil moisture is estimated by inverting physical scattering models for low-vegetation crops using L-band airborne SAR data over the incidence angle range from 30 to 50°. The retrieval performance is fairly uniform across the incidence angle, partly because of the solid forward modeling of the vegetation correction across the incidence angle and also thanks to the retrieval of surface roughness. In this paper, we examine whether and how the retrieval of surface roughness impacts the soil moisture retrieval performance. Theoretical considerations suggest the two should may be related. Experimental results suggest both positive and negative relationship.