Explaining anomalies in SAR and scatterometer soil moisture retrievals from dry soils with sub-surface scattering

Morrison, K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8075-0316 and Wagner, W. (2020) Explaining anomalies in SAR and scatterometer soil moisture retrievals from dry soils with sub-surface scattering. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 58 (3). pp. 2190-2197. ISSN 0196-2892 doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2019.2954771

Abstract/Summary

This paper presents the results of a laboratory investigation to explain anomalously-high soil moisture estimates observed in retrievals from SAR and scatterometer backscatter, affecting extensive areas of the world associated with arid climates. High resolution C-band tomographic profiling was applied in experiments to understand the mechanisms underlying these anomalous retrievals. The imagery captured unique high-resolution profiles of the variations in the vertical backscattering patterns though a sandy soil with moisture change. The relative strengths of the surface and sub-surface returns were dependent upon both soil moisture and soil structure, incidence-angle, and polarization. Co-polarised returns could be dominated by both surface and sub-surface returns at times, whereas cross-polarised returns were strongly associated with sub-surface features. The work confirms suspicions that anomalous moisture estimates can arise from the presence of sub-surface features. Diversity in polarization and incidence angle may provide sufficient diagnostics to flag and correct these erroneous estimates, allowing their incorporation into global soil moisture productsMorrison

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/87367
Identification Number/DOI	10.1109/TGRS.2019.2954771
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	IEEE Xplore
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