Moisture content retrieval from agricultural fields using Synthetic Aperture Radar polarimetry

Abstract

In the past years, polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radars have contributed in the achievement of great advances in remote sensing. Employing SAR polarimetry turned out to be very effective in diverse applications of several fields such as agriculture,detection, ecology…etc. This work has for aim the retrieval of the soil moisture content from bare soils regions only, for this purpose Synthetic Aperture Radar have been exploited using their polarimetric properties. First, bare surface discrimination is applied using a new approach, and then the soil moisture content is estimated by applying an empiric inversion method. This work is intended to the agricultural field, indeed harnessing this technique for watering agricultural lands would have amazing returns giving the fact that this technique would help spotting with exact measures the areas in need of more moisture, which would improve the growth of the sowings, and consequently, a positive outcome on water savings is reached.