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Emission and backscattering signals of land surfaces at different frequencies have distinctive responses to soil and vegetation physical states. The use of multi-frequency combined active and passive microwave signals provides complementary information to better understand and interpret the observed signals in relation to surface states and the underlying physical processes. Such a capability also improves our ability to retrieve surface parameters and states such as soil moisture, freeze-thaw dynamics and vegetation biomass and vegetation water content (VWC) for ecosystem monitoring. We present here a prototype Community Land Active Passive Microwave Radiative Transfer Modelling platform (CLAP) for simulating both backscatter (a0) and emission (TB) signals of land surfaces, in which the CLAP is backboned by an air-to-soil transition model (ATS) (accounting for surface dielectric roughness) integrated with the Advanced Integral Equation Model (AIEM) for modelling soil surface scattering, and the Tor Vergata model for modelling vegetation scattering and the interaction between vegetation and soil parts. The CLAP was used to simulate both ground-based and space-borne multi-frequency microwave measurements collected at the Maqu observatory on the eastern Tibetan plateau. The ground-based systems include a scatterometer system (1-10 GHz) and an L-band microwave radiometer. The space-borne measurements are obtained from the X-band and C-band Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) radiation observations. The impacts of different vegetation properties (i.e., structure, water and temperature dynamics) and soil conditions (i.e., different moisture and temperature profiles) on the microwave signals were investigated by CLAP simulation for understanding factors that can account for diurnal variations of the observed signals. The results show that the dynamic VWC partially accounts for the diurnal variation of the observed signal at the low frequencies (i.e., S- and L-bands), while the diurnal variation of the observed signals at high frequencies (i.e., X- and C-bands) is more due to vegetation temperature changing, which implies the necessity to first disentangle the impact of vegetation temperature for the use of high frequency microwave signals. The model derived vegetation optical depth t differs in terms of frequencies and different model parameterizations, while its diurnal variation depends on the diurnal variation of VWC regardless of frequency. After normalizing t at multi-frequency by wavenumber, difference is still observed among different frequencies. This indicates that t is indeed frequency-dependent, and t for each frequency is suggested to be applied in the retrieval of soil and vegetation parameters. Moreover, t at different frequencies (e.g., X-band and L-band) cannot be simply combined for constructing accurate long time series microwave-based vegetation product. To this purpose, it is suggested to investigate the role of the leaf water potential in regulating plant water use and its impact on the normalized t at multi-frequency. Overall, the CLAP is expected to improve our capability for understanding and applying current and future multi-frequency space-borne microwave systems (e.g. those from ROSE-L and CIMR) for vegetation monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A ground-based scatterometer was installed on an alpine meadow over the Tibetan Plateau to study the soil moisture and -temperature dynamics of the top soil layer and air-soil interface during the period August 2017-August 2018. The deployed system measured the amplitude and phase of the ground surface radar return at hourly and half-hourly intervals over 1-10 GHz in the four linear polarization combinations (vv, hh, hv, vh). In this paper we describe the developed scatterometer system, gathered datasets, retrieval method for the backscattering coefficient (σ0), and results of (σ0) for co-polarization. The system was installed on a 5 m high tower and designed using only commercially available components: a Vector Network Analyser (VNA), four coaxial cables, and two dual polarization broadband gain horn antennas at a fixed position and orientation. We provide a detailed description on how to retrieve the co-polarized backscattering coefficients σ0vv & σ0hh for this specific scatterometer design. To account for the particular effects caused by wide antenna radiation patterns (G) at lower frequencies, σ0 was calculated using the narrow-beam approximation combined with a mapping the function G²/R4 over the ground surface. (R is the distance between antennas and the infinitesimal patches of ground surface.) This approach allowed for a proper derivation of footprint positions and -areas, and incidence angle ranges. The frequency averaging technique was used to reduce the effects of fading on the σ0 uncertainty. Absolute calibration of the scatterometer was achieved with measured backscatter from a rectangular metal plate as reference target. In the retrieved time-series of σ0vv & σ0hh for S-band (2.5-3.0 GHz), C-band (4.5-5.0 GHz), and X-band (9.0-10.0 GHz) we observed characteristic changes or features that can be attributed to seasonal or diurnal changes in the soil. For example a fully frozen top soil, diurnal freeze-thaw changes in the top soil, emerging vegetation in spring, and drying of soil. Our preliminary analysis on the collected σ0 time-series data set demonstrates that it contains valuable information on water- and energy exchange directly below the air-soil interface. Information which is difficult to quantify, at that particular position, with in-situ measurements techniques alone. Availability of backscattering data for multiple frequency bands allows for studying scattering effects at different depths within the soil and vegetation canopy during the spring and summer periods. Hence further investigation of this scatterometer data set provides an opportunity to gain new insights in hydro-meteorological processes, such as freezing and thawing, and how these can be monitored with multi-frequency scatterometer observations. The data set is available via https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-zc5-skyg (Hofste and Su, 2020). The effects of fading, calibration, and system stability on the uncertainty in σ0 are estimated to vary from ± 1.3 dB for X-band with vv-polarization to ± 2.7 dB for S-band with hh-polarization through the campaign. The low angular resolution of the antennas result in additional σ0 uncertainty, one that is more difficult to quantify. Estimations point out that it probably will not exceed ± 2 dB with C-band. Despite these uncertainties, we believe that the strength of our approach lies in the capability of measuring σ0 dynamics over a broad frequency range, 1-10 GHz, with high temporal resolution over a full-year period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]