Dependence of Soil Moisture Retrieval Accuracy on Backscatter Resolution

Theresa C. Van Hateren, Marco Chini, Patrick Matgen, Luca Pulvirenti, Nazzareno Pierdicca, Adriaan J. Teuling

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paperAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The accuracy of high resolution soil moisture estimated from SAR backscatter data is limited due to speckle in the native resolution backscatter data. However, reducing this speckly by means of spatial aggregation also removes useful information from the data. We therefore hypothesised that using unfiltered backscatter data in a soil moisture inversion model can be valuable in high resolution soil moisture applications. A field study combined with a synthetic experiment showed that calculating soil moisture prior to spatial averaging to the final target resolution (CtA) has substantial advantages over the average-then-calculate (AtC) approach. Currently, the AtC strategy is most often applied in soil moisture studies, mainly due to its computational advantage compared to the CtA approach. However, especially at high resolutions, using a slightly higher source resolution backscatter data than the target soil moisture resolution, can already improve accuracy of the soil moisture estimates.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIGARSS 2022 - 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium
PublisherIEEE
Pages5497-5500
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781665427920
ISBN (Print)9781665427937
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Sept 2022
Event2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, IGARSS 2022 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Duration: 17 Jul 202222 Jul 2022

Publication series

NameInternational Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS)
Volume2022-July
ISSN (Print)2153-6996
ISSN (Electronic)2153-7003

Conference/symposium

Conference/symposium2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, IGARSS 2022
Country/TerritoryMalaysia
CityKuala Lumpur
Period17/07/2222/07/22

Keywords

  • field data
  • high resolution
  • Soil moisture
  • synthetic experiment

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