Refined soil moisture estimation by means of L-band polarimetry.

A recently published hybrid decomposition and inversion approach is adapted and enlarged using a generalized scattering model of the vegetation volume for a refined and more flexible soil moisture estimation under a temporally and spatially varying agricultural vegetation cover. Fully polarimetric SAR data of DLR's E-SAR system at L-band are used as observation basis. The results for the AgriSAR campaign, carried out in 2006 within the Peene catchment, reveal a detailed inversion due to the pixel-based procedure and very high inversion rates (>95%) obtaining a gapless inversion along the entire growth cycle in strongly varying agricultural areas. The validation with in situ measurements for a plurality of summer and winter crops states a root mean square error of 4.55vol.%, while a wide moisture range (∼2–30vol.%) is covered by the refined soil moisture inversion under vegetation using solely polarimetric SAR techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]