Envisat Asar Polarimatric Data for Soil Moisture Mapping

ENVISAT ASAR Data acquired over four test sites were analyzed for soil moisture mapping using various models. The polarimetric data covers dual polarized HH/VV, HH/HV and single polarized VV in swaths IS2, IS2, IS4, IS5 and IS6. SIR-C Land C-band data were also used for the verification of models. Dubois et al. empirical and linear regression equations were used for soil moisture estimation. The test sites cover bare, rice, sugarcane, corn, etc. fields. Using the SIR-C data, we found that Dubois et al. model overestimates soil moisture at C-band compared to L-band. The difference is about 5%. The linear regressions equations developed by Baghdadi et al. predict soil moisture with reasonable accuracy for bare fields using ENVISAT ASAR data. However, these regression equations are site specific and do not take into account surface roughness and vegetation cover. More groundtruth data are needed for the verification of these relations.