Sub-canopy soil moisture inversion using repeat pass Shuttle Imaging Radar C polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar interferometric data

Abstract

The advances in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry techniques provide a promising way to extract sub-canopy surface parameters using processed SAR images. In this paper, we evaluate the fully maximum likelihood decomposition model of polarimetric SAR interferometry for sub-canopy soil moisture estimation. We further propose a methodology for sub-canopy soil estimation using repeat pass space-borne SIR-C (Shuttle Imaging Radar C) L-band polarimetric SAR interferometric data. The comparison of the inversion results with the field measurements and the climate data of Hotan region from 1951 to 2006 suggests good inversion potential of the proposed method.