Search Results (18)

Understanding physical processes in nature, including the occurrence of slow-onset natural disasters such as droughts and landslides, requires knowledge of the change in soil moisture between two points in time. The study was conducted on a relatively bare soil, and the change in soil moisture was examined with an index called Normalized radar Backscatter soil Moisture Index (NBMI) using Sentinel-1 satellite data. Along with soil moisture measured with a probe on the ground, a study of correlation with satellite imagery was conducted using a Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) model. Furthermore, the Dubois model was used to predict soil moisture. Results have shown that NBMI on a logarithmic scale provides a good representation of soil moisture change with R²~86%. The MLR model showed a positive correlation of soil moisture with the co-polarized backscatter coefficient, but an opposite correlation with the surface roughness and angle of incidence. The results of the Dubois model showed poor correlation of 44.37% and higher RMSE error of 17.1, demonstrating the need for detailed and accurate measurement of surface roughness as a prerequisite for simulating the model. Of the three approaches, index-based measurement has been shown to be the most rapid for understanding soil moisture change and has the potential to be used for understanding some mechanisms of natural disasters under similar soil conditions. Full article

Soil moisture content (SMC) is a significant factor affecting crop growth and development. However, SMC estimation, based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR), is influenced by a variety of surface parameters, such as vegetation cover and surface roughness. As a result, determining the SMC across agricultural areas (e.g., wheat fields) remotely (i.e., without ground measurement) is difficult to achieve. In this study, a model-based polarization decomposition method was used to decompose the original SAR signal into different scattering components that represented different scattering mechanisms. The different volume scattering models were applied, and then the results were compared in order to remove the scattering contribution from vegetation canopy, and extract the surface scattering components related to the soil moisture. Finally, by combining extensively used surface scattering models (e.g., CIEM and Dubois), and a method of roughness parameters optimization, a lookup table was developed to estimate the soil moisture during the wheat growth period. When CIEM is applied, the R² and RMSE of the SMC are 0.534, 5.62 vol.%, and for the Dubois model, 0.634, 5.16 vol.%, respectively, which indicates that this approach provides good estimation performance for measuring soil moisture during the wheat growing season. Full article

Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) is a key factor for understanding the physical process between the land surface and atmosphere. With the advancement of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology and backscattering models, retrieval of SSM over the land surface at higher spatial resolution became effective and accurate. This study examines the potential of C-band Sentinel-1 SAR data to derive SSM in a dry season (February 2020) over bare soil and vegetated agricultural fields in the Kosi River Basin (KRB) in North Bihar. Field campaigns were conducted simultaneously with Sentinel–1A acquisition date, and measurements comprised 54 in-situ sampling plots for the top of the soil (0–7.6 cm depth) using time-domain reflectometry (TDR–300). The modified Dubois model was employed to estimate relative soil permittivity from the backscatter values (σ°) of VV polarization. With the help of Topp’s model, volumetric SSM (m³/m³) was derived for all areas with normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) less than 0.4 that majorly covered bare land or sparse vegetation. The key findings demonstrated that model-derived SSM was well correlated with the in-situ SSM with the coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.77 and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.06 m³/m³. The spatial distribution of SSM ranged from 0.05 to 0.5 m³/m³ over the KRB, and the highest moisture was found in the Kosi Megafan. The modified Dubois model was effective in providing SSM from Sentinel–1A data in bare soil and agricultural fields and, thus, supporting use in hydrological, meteorological and crop planning applications. Full article

The new constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, Sentinel-1, provides images at a high spatial resolution (up to 10 m) typical of radar sensors, but also at high time resolutions (6–12 revisit days), representing a major advance for the development of operational soil moisture mapping at a plot scale. Our objective was to develop and test an operational approach to assimilate Sentinel 1 observations in a land surface model, and to demonstrate the potential of the use of the new satellite sensors in soil moisture predictions in a grass field. However, for soil moisture retrievals from Sentinel 1 observations in grasslands, there is still the need to identify robust and parsimonious solutions, accounting for the effects of vegetation attenuation and their seasonal variability. In a grass experimental site in Sardinia, where field measurements of soil moisture were available for the 2016–2018 period, three common retrieval methods have been compared to estimate soil moisture from Sentinel 1 data, with increasing complexity and physical interpretation of the processes: the empirical change detection method, the semi-empirical Dubois model, and the physically-based Fung model. In operational approaches for soil moisture mapping from remote sensing, the parameterization simplification of soil moisture retrieval techniques is encouraged, looking for parameter estimates without a priori information. We have proposed a simplified approach for estimating a key parameter of retrieval methods, the surface roughness, from the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived by simultaneous Sentinel 2 optical observations. Soil moisture was estimated better using the proposed approach and the Dubois model than by using the other methods, which accounted vegetation effects through the common water cloud model. Furthermore, we successfully merged radar-based soil moisture observations and a land surface model, through a data assimilation approach based on the Ensemble Kalman filter, providing robust predictions of soil moisture. Full article

This paper discusses the potential of L-band Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) and C-band Sentinel-1 radar data for retrieving soil parameters over cereal fields. For this purpose, multi-incidence, multi-polarization and dual-frequency satellite data were acquired simultaneously with in situ measurements collected over a semiarid area, the Merguellil Plain (central Tunisia). The L- and C-band signal sensitivity to soil roughness, moisture and vegetation was investigated. High correlation coefficients were observed between the radar signals and soil roughness values for all processed multi-configurations of ALOS-2 and Sentinel-1 data. The sensitivity of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data to soil moisture was investigated for three classes of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (low vegetation cover, medium cover and dense cover), illustrating a decreasing sensitivity with increasing NDVI values. The highest sensitivity to soil moisture under the dense cover class is observed in L-band data. For various vegetation properties (leaf area index (LAI), height of vegetation cover (H) and vegetation water content (VWC)), a strong correlation is observed with the ALOS-2 radar signals (in HH(Horizontal-Horizontal) and HV(Horizontal-Vertical) polarizations). Different empirical models that link radar signals (in the L- and C-bands) to soil moisture and roughness parameters, as well as the semi-empirical Dubois modified model (Dubois-B) and the modified integral equation model (IEM-B), over bare soils are proposed for all polarizations. The results reveal that IEM-B performed a better accuracy comparing to Dubois-B. This analysis is also proposed for covered surfaces using different options provided by the water cloud model (WCM) (with and without the soil–vegetation interaction scattering term) coupled with the best accuracy bare soil backscattering models: IEM-B for co-polarization and empirical models for the entire dataset. Based on the validated backscattering models, different options of coupled models are tested for soil moisture inversion. The integration of a soil–vegetation interaction component in the WCM illustrates a considerable contribution to soil moisture precision in the HV polarization mode in the L-band frequency and a neglected effect on C-band data inversion. Full article

This study aimed to analyze existing microwave surface (Oh, Dubois, Water Cloud Model “WCM”, Integral Equation Model “IEM”) and canopy (Water Cloud Model “WCM”, Single Scattering Radiative Transfer “SSRT”) Radiative Transfer (RT) models and assess advantages and disadvantages of different model combinations in terms of VV polarized radar backscatter simulation of wheat fields. The models are driven with field measurements acquired in 2017 at a test site near Munich, Germany. As vegetation descriptor for the canopy models Leaf Area Index (LAI) was used. The effect of empirical model parameters is evaluated in two different ways: (a) empirical model parameters are set as static throughout the whole time series of one growing season and (b) empirical model parameters describing the backscatter attenuation by the canopy are treated as non-static in time. The model results are compared to a dense Sentinel-1 C-band time series with observations every 1.5 days. The utilized Sentinel-1 time series comprises images acquired with different satellite acquisition geometries (different incidence and azimuth angles), which allows us to evaluate the model performance for different acquisition geometries. Results show that total LAI as vegetation descriptor in combination with static empirical parameters fit Sentinel-1 radar backscatter of wheat fields only sufficient within the first half of the vegetation period. With the saturation of LAI and/or canopy height of the wheat fields, the observed increase in Sentinel-1 radar backscatter cannot be modeled. Probable cause are effects of changes within the grains (both structure and water content per leaf area) and their influence on the backscatter. However, model results with LAI and non-static empirical parameters fit the Sentinel-1 data well for the entire vegetation period. Limitations regarding different satellite acquisition geometries become apparent for the second half of the vegetation period. The observed overall increase in backscatter can be modeled, but a trend mismatch between modeled and observed backscatter values of adjacent time points with different acquisition geometries is observed. Full article

Surface soil moisture has a wide application in climate change, agronomy, water resources, and in many other domain of science and engineering. Measurement of soil moisture at high spatial and temporal resolution at regional and global scale is needed for the prediction of flood, drought, planning and management of agricultural productivity to ensure food security. Recent advancement in microwave remote sensing, especially after the launch of Sentinel operational satellites has enabled the scientific community to estimate soil moisture at higher spatial and temporal resolution with greater accuracy. This study evaluates the potential of Sentinel-1A satellite images to estimate soil moisture in a semi-arid region. Exactly at the time when satellite passes over the study area, we have collected soil samples at 37 different locations and measured the soil moisture from 5 cm below the ground surface using ML3 theta probe. We processed the soil samples in laboratory to obtain volumetric soil moisture using the oven dry method. We found soil moisture measured from calibrated theta probe and oven dry method are in good agreement with Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) 0.025 m ${}^3$ /m ${}^3$ and coefficient of determination (R ${}^2$ ) 0.85. We then processed Sentinel-1A images and applied modified Dubois model to calculate relative permittivity of the soil from the backscatter values ( ${\sigma }^{\circ }$ ). The volumetric soil moisture at each pixel is then calculated by applying the universal Topp’s model. Finally, we masked the pixels whose Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) value is greater than 0.4 to generate soil moisture map as per the Dubois NDVI criterion. Our modelled soil moisture accord with the measured values with RMSE = 0.035 and R ${}^2$ = 0.75. We found a small bias in the modelled soil moisture ( $0.02{\mathrm{m}}^3/{\mathrm{m}}^3$ ). However, this has reduced significantly ( $0.001{\mathrm{m}}^3/{\mathrm{m}}^3$ ) after applying a bias correction based on Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) matching. Our approach provides a first-order estimate of soil moisture from Sentinel-1A images in sparsely vegetated agricultural land. Full article

This paper proposes a combined approach comprising a set of methods for the high-precision mapping of soil moisture in a study area located in Jiangsu Province of China, based on the Chinese C-band synthetic aperture radar data of GF-3 and high spatial-resolution optical data of GF-1, in situ experimental datasets and background knowledge. The study was conducted in three stages: First, in the process of eliminating the effect of vegetation canopy, an empirical vegetation water content model and a water cloud model with localized parameters were developed to obtain the bare soil backscattering coefficient. Second, four commonly used models (advanced integral equation model (AIEM), look-up table (LUT) method, Oh model, and the Dubois model) were coupled to acquire nine soil moisture retrieval maps and algorithms. Finally, a simple and effective optimal solution method was proposed to select and combine the nine algorithms based on classification strategies devised using three types of background knowledge. A comprehensive evaluation was carried out on each soil moisture map in terms of the root-mean-square-error (RMSE), Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean bias (bias). The results show that for the nine individual algorithms, the estimated model constructed using the AIEM (m_v1) was significantly more accurate than those constructed using the other models (RMSE = 0.0321 cm³/cm³, MAE = 0.0260 cm³/cm³, and PCC = 0.9115), followed by the Oh model (m_v5) and LUT inversion method under HH polarization (m_v2). Compared with the independent algorithms, the optimal solution methods have significant advantages; the soil moisture map obtained using the classification strategy based on the percentage content of clay was the most satisfactory (RMSE = 0.0271 cm³/cm³, MAE = 0.0225 cm³/cm³, and PCC = 0.9364). This combined method could not only effectively integrate the optical and radar satellite data but also couple a variety of commonly used inversion models, and at the same time, background knowledge was introduced into the optimal solution method. Thus, we provide a new method for the high-precision mapping of soil moisture in areas with a complex underlying surface. Full article

Dempster–Shafer theory has been widely used in many applications, especially in the measurement of information uncertainty. However, under the D-S theory, how to use the belief entropy to measure the uncertainty is still an open issue. In this paper, we list some significant properties. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a new entropy, for which some properties are discussed. Our new model has two components. The first is Nguyen entropy. The second component is the product of the cardinality of the frame of discernment (FOD) and Dubois entropy. In addition, under certain conditions, the new belief entropy can be transformed into Shannon entropy. Compared with the others, the new entropy considers the impact of FOD. Through some numerical examples and simulation, the proposed belief entropy is proven to be able to measure uncertainty accurately. Full article

In the earth ecosystem, surface soil moisture is an important factor in the process of energy exchange between land and atmosphere, which has a strong control effect on land surface evapotranspiration, water migration, and carbon cycle. Soil moisture is particularly important in an oasis region because of its fragile ecological environment. Accordingly, a soil moisture retrieval model was conducted based on Dubois model and ratio model. Based on the Dubois model, the in situ soil roughness was used to simulate the backscattering coefficient of bare soil, and the empirical relationship was established with the measured soil moisture. The ratio model was used to eliminate the backscattering contribution of vegetation, in which three vegetation indices were used to characterize vegetation growth. The results were as follows: (1) the Dubois model was used to calibrate the unknown parameters of the ratio model and verified the feasibility of the ratio model to simulate the backscattering coefficient. (2) All three vegetation indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Vegetation Water Content (VWC), and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI)) can represent the scattering characteristics of vegetation in an oasis region, but the VWC vegetation index is more suitable than the others. (3) Based on the Dubois model and ratio model, the soil moisture retrieval model was conducted, and the in situ soil moisture was used to analyze the accuracy of the simulated soil moisture, which found that the soil moisture retrieval accuracy is the highest under VWC vegetation index, and the coefficient of determination is 0.76. The results show that the soil moisture retrieval model conducted on the Dubois model and ratio model is feasible. Full article

Surface soil moisture (SSM) retrieval over agricultural fields using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is often obstructed by the vegetation effects on the backscattering during the growing season. This paper reports the retrieval of SSM from RADARSAT-2 SAR data that were acquired over wheat and soybean fields throughout the 2015 (April to October) growing season. The developed SSM retrieval algorithm includes a vegetation-effect correction. A method that can adequately represent the scattering behavior of vegetation-covered area was developed by defining the backscattering from vegetation and the underlying soil individually to remove the effect of vegetation on the total SAR backscattering. The Dubois model was employed to describe the backscattering from the underlying soil. A modified Water Cloud Model (MWCM) was used to remove the effect of backscattering that is caused by vegetation canopy. SSM was derived from an inversion scheme while using the dual co-polarizations (HH and VV) from the quad polarization RADARSAT-2 SAR data. Validation against ground measurements showed a high correlation between the measured and estimated SSM (R² = 0.71, RMSE = 4.43 vol.%, p < 0.01), which suggested an operational potential of RADARSAT-2 SAR data on SSM estimation over wheat and soybean fields during the growing season. Full article

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of two radar backscattering models; the calibrated integral equation model (CIEM) and the modified Dubois model (MDB) over an agricultural area in Karaj, Iran. In the first part, the performance of the models is evaluated based on the field measurement and the mentioned backscattering models, CIEM and MDB performed with root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.78 dB and 1.45 dB, respectively. In the second step, based on the neural networks (NNS), soil surface moisture is estimated using the two backscattering models, based on neural networks (NNs), from single polarization Sentinel-1 images over bare soils. The inversion results show the efficiency of the single polarized data for retrieving soil surface moisture, especially for VV polarization. Full article

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the most used radar backscattering models (Integral Equation Model “IEM”, Oh, Dubois, and Advanced Integral Equation Model “AIEM”) using a wide dataset of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data and experimental soil measurements. These forward models reproduce the radar backscattering coefficients ( ${\mathsf{\sigma }}^0$ ) from soil surface characteristics (dielectric constant, roughness) and SAR sensor parameters (radar wavelength, incidence angle, polarization). The analysis dataset is composed of AIRSAR, SIR-C, JERS-1, PALSAR-1, ESAR, ERS, RADARSAT, ASAR and TerraSAR-X data and in situ measurements (soil moisture and surface roughness). Results show that Oh model version developed in 1992 gives the best fitting of the backscattering coefficients in HH and VV polarizations with RMSE values of 2.6 dB and 2.4 dB, respectively. Simulations performed with the Dubois model show a poor correlation between real data and model simulations in HH polarization (RMSE = 4.0 dB) and better correlation with real data in VV polarization (RMSE = 2.9 dB). The IEM and the AIEM simulate the backscattering coefficient with high RMSE when using a Gaussian correlation function. However, better simulations are performed with IEM and AIEM by using an exponential correlation function (slightly better fitting with AIEM than IEM). Good agreement was found between the radar data and the simulations using the calibrated version of the IEM modified by Baghdadi (IEM_B) with bias less than 1.0 dB and RMSE less than 2.0 dB. These results confirm that, up to date, the IEM modified by Baghdadi (IEM_B) is the most adequate to estimate soil moisture and roughness from SAR data. Full article

The objective of this paper is to propose a new semi-empirical radar backscattering model for bare soil surfaces based on the Dubois model. A wide dataset of backscattering coefficients extracted from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images and in situ soil surface parameter measurements (moisture content and roughness) is used. The retrieval of soil parameters from SAR images remains challenging because the available backscattering models have limited performances. Existing models, physical, semi-empirical, or empirical, do not allow for a reliable estimate of soil surface geophysical parameters for all surface conditions. The proposed model, developed in HH, HV, and VV polarizations, uses a formulation of radar signals based on physical principles that are validated in numerous studies. Never before has a backscattering model been built and validated on such an important dataset as the one proposed in this study. It contains a wide range of incidence angles (18°–57°) and radar wavelengths (L, C, X), well distributed, geographically, for regions with different climate conditions (humid, semi-arid, and arid sites), and involving many SAR sensors. The results show that the new model shows a very good performance for different radar wavelengths (L, C, X), incidence angles, and polarizations (RMSE of about 2 dB). This model is easy to invert and could provide a way to improve the retrieval of soil parameters. Full article

The potential use of TerraSAR-X and Radarsat-2 data for soil moisture retrieval over bare agricultural areas was investigated using both empirical and semi-empirical approaches. For the empirical approach, the Support Vector Regression (SVR) model was used with two cases: (1) using only one C-band or X-band image; and (2) using a pair of C-band and X-band images jointly. For the semi-empirical approach, the modified Dubois model based on C-band and X-band SAR data was developed to estimate soil moisture content. The experiments were implemented over two bare agricultural areas, and in-situ measurements were carried out to assess the methods. The results showed that the TerraSAR-X and Radarsat-2 are suitable remote sensing tools for the estimation of surface soil moisture, with an accuracy of about 3 vol % (root mean square error, RMSE) over bare agricultural areas. Compared with the results obtained by Radarsat-2 data, TerraSAR-X data gives a slight improvement in estimating soil moisture. The accuracy of the soil moisture estimation was improved further when the two bands SAR data were used (RMSE of about 2.2 vol %) instead of only one. Moreover, the modified Dubois model showed comparable accuracy to the empirical model independent of the surface roughness. Full article