Soil moisture retrieval over croplands using dual-pol L-band GRD SAR data

Vegetation cover significantly influences the hydrometeorological processes of land surfaces. The heterogeneity of vegetation cover makes these processes more complex and impacts the interaction between water held in the soil matrix and vegetation cover. The backscatter measured by Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is sensitive to target dielectric and morphological properties. In addition, SAR acquisitions are weather-independent, providing a major advantage over optical imaging during periods of cloud cover. Most often, vegetation properties are measured using vegetation indices, including simple ratios of backscatter intensities. However, this approach can miss the scattered wave purity from vegetation targets. The scattered wave characteristic is an essential parameter as it is susceptible to the complex random structure of vegetation. In this study, we propose a novel dual-polarimetric SAR vegetation descriptor based on the co-pol purity component of the wave. We use this descriptor within a semi-empirical vegetation model to estimate soil moisture. It is noteworthy that this proposed method to retrieve soil moisture uses only the dual-polarimetric Ground Range Detected (GRD) SAR product, i.e., only backscatter intensities. Therefore, the proposed method has the potential for operational scale monitoring applications at a global scale. This study validated different crop types (viz. canola, oats, forage, maize, soybeans, sugar beet, wheat, winter wheat, winter barley) over two test sites using airborne SAR data. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values for soil moisture are within the range of 4.3% to 7.7% with the Pearson correlation coefficient r greater than 0.6. This novel descriptor will facilitate the operational use of dual-polarimetric GRD SAR data for vegetation monitoring and soil moisture estimation.