Sensitivity of C-band polarimetric SAR data to the soil surface parameters over bare agriculture fields

Abstract

Soil surface characteristics, namely the soil moisture content and roughness, play an important role in different applications such as hydrology, agronomy or meteorology. Currently, except for RADARSAT-2 which is polarimetric sensor, the current satellite SARs allow acquisitions only with one or two polarizations. There is currently a great challenge in the use of polarimetric parameters in order to estimate surface roughness and soil moisture. Only a few studies have analysed the potential uses of polarimetric SAR data for the estimation of surface roughness and soil moisture over bare agricultural fields ([1], [2], [3] and [4]). The objective of the present study is to investigate the sensitivity of polarimetric parameters at the C-band to bare agricultural soil parameters (soil moisture and surface roughness). Indeed, the potential of polarimetric parameters in the C-band was studied little and the available SAR studies use especially high radar wavelengths as the L-band. Only the following polarimetric descriptors that were considered to be important for the characterisation of the soil surface parameters were analysed: the angle α 1 , the entropy (H), the anisotropy (A), and the eigenvalue relative differences (SERD and DERD). These polarimetric parameters are resulting from the studies carried out with L-band polarimetric data over bare agriculture fields.