Inversion of Surface Parameters from NASA/JPL AIRSAR Polarimetric SAR Data

The improvements of polarimetric SAR data inversion algorithms are discussed and presented. The confounding influence of roughness and vegetation cover on the estimation of the soil moisture contents are considered in the inversion algorithm that estimates moisture content and roughness parameters simultaneously from the pertinent combination of polarization measurements. The estimation of soil moisture contents from polarimetric SAR data is investigated using the AIRSAR data collected over the Jeju Island which were acquired along two orthogonal flight lines during PACRIM-II Korea experiment. An extension of the soil moisture inversion algorithm to a wider range of terrain types is presented by using the eigenvector based decomposition of the polarimetric SAR image data sets.