Preliminary results on soil moisture mapping in Alessandria area (Northern Italy) using Envisat A-SAR

• Published in: IGARSS 2004. 2004 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Vol. 5; pp. 3529 - 3531 vol.5
• Main Authors: Bignami, C., Pierdicca, N., Pulvirenti, L., Ticconi, F., Paloscia, S., Pettinato, S., Santi, E., Solbo, S.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway NJ IEEE 2004
• Subjects: Applied geophysics; Backscatter; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Hydrology; Hydrology. Hydrogeology; Internal geophysics; Moisture measurement; Polarization; Probes; Rivers; Rough surfaces; Satellites; Soil measurements; Soil moisture; Surface roughness; Southern Europe; Italy; Po Valley; models; synthetic aperture radar; wave scattering; soil moisture; Europe; Space remote sensing; polarization; monitoring; backscattering; Pixel
• ISBN: 0780387422; 9780780387423
• DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS.2004.1370471

This work present some experimental campaigns aiming to assess the potential of monitoring soil moisture by ENVISAT ASAR (Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar). Soil moisture measurements were carried out on November 2003 and June 2004 close to Alessandria (Northern Italy) by using a TDR probe simultaneously to ENVISAT overpasses. In situ measurements had been collected in agricultural fields that were subsequently identified on ENVISAT ASAR images by means of a geo-coding process. Pixels of each area have been averaged in order to compute the mean backscattering coefficient. Results have been derived concerning the sensitivity of the backscattering coefficient to soil-moisture compared to what is predicted by a semi-empirical scattering model.