Abstract
With the upcoming L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite mission Radar Observing System for Europe L-band SAR (ROSE-L) and its integration into existing C-band satellite missions such as Sentinel-1, multi-frequency SAR observations with high temporal and spatial resolution will become available. The SARSense campaign was conducted between June and August 2019 to investigate the potential for estimating soil and plant parameters at the agricultural test site in Selhausen (Germany). It included C- and L-band air- and space-borne observations accompanied by extensive in situ soil and plant sampling as well as unmanned aerial system (UAS) based multispectral and thermal infrared measurements. In this regard, we introduce a new publicly available SAR data set and present the first analysis of C- and L-band co- and cross-polarized backscattering signals regarding their sensitivity to soil and plant parameters. Results indicate that a multi-frequency approach is relevant to disentangle soil and plant contributions to the SAR signal and to identify specific scattering mechanisms associated with the characteristics of different crop type, especially for root crops and cereals.
Highlights
Introduction conditions of the Creative CommonsWith the increasing impact of human activities and the effects of climate change on hydrological systems worldwide, appropriate and adapted management and mitigation concepts are required [1,2,3,4]
To evaluate the potential and significance of the flight data, the respective tracks were compared with the corresponding satellite data
We focused on soil moisture, veg13 of 29 etation height, and vegetation water content (VWC), addressing the main objectives of the SARSense campaign
Summary
With the increasing impact of human activities and the effects of climate change on hydrological systems worldwide, appropriate and adapted management and mitigation concepts are required [1,2,3,4]. Sentinel-1 A/B SAR mission, ROSE-L will enhance the European radar imaging capacity by increasing the frequency of successive radar data collections In this regard, it will enhance the possibilities for using soil and plant parameter retrieval based on change detection methods (e.g., alpha approximation and interferometry methods). Due to the different wavelengths, C- and L-band SAR differ in their sensitivity to soil and plant parameters, allowing more detailed parameter observations and monitoring when combined In this context, the SARSense flight campaign was carried out between the 19 June and 9 August 2019 to investigate the potential and synergy effects of using full-polarized, multi-frequency SAR data regarding soil and plant parameter retrieval for bare soil and under various vegetation covers [34]. The aim of this contribution is to characterize the study area (Section 2), to describe the SAR, UAS, and in situ observation strategy and collected data (Section 3), to inform about data pre-processing and applied methods (Section 4), to present and discuss the main results with respect to the abovementioned campaign objectives (Sections 5 and 6), as well as to publish the dataset for making them publicly available for further research in the community
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