A potential use for the C-band polarimetric SAR parameters to characterise the soil surface over bare agriculture fields

N. Baghdadi (1) , R. Cresson (1) , Eric Pottier (2) , M. Aubert (1) , Mehrez Zribi (3) , A. Jacome (4) , S. Benabdallah (5)

1 UMR TETIS - Territoires, Environnement, Télédétection et Information Spatiale
2 IETR - Institut d'Électronique et des Technologies du numéRique
3 CESBIO - Centre d'études spatiales de la biosphère
4 INRS - Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique [Québec]
5 aucun

The objective of this study was to analyze the potential of the C-band polarimetric SAR parameters for the soil surface characterization of bare agricultural soils. RADARSAT-2 data and simulations using the Integral Equation Model (IEM) were analyzed to evaluate the polarimetric SAR parameters' sensitivities to the soil moisture and surface roughness. The results showed that the polarimetric parameters in the C-band were not very relevant to the characterization of the soil surface over bare agricultural areas. Low dynamics were often observed between the polarimetric parameters and both the soil moisture content and the soil surface roughness. These low dynamics do not allow for the accurate estimation of the soil parameters, but they could augment the standard inversion approaches to improve the estimation of these soil parameters. The polarimetric parameter alpha_1 could be used to detect very moist soils (>30%), while the anisotropy could be used to separate the smooth soils.

Mots clés: TELEDETECTION; RADAR; PROPRIETE DU SOL; AGRICULTURE; POLARIMETRIC SAR DATA; RADARSAT-2; SOIL SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS; BARE AGRICULTURAL SOILS

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement

N. Baghdadi, R. Cresson, Eric Pottier, M. Aubert, Mehrez Zribi, et al.. A potential use for the C-band polarimetric SAR parameters to characterise the soil surface over bare agriculture fields. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2012, 50 (10), p. 3844 - p. 3858. ⟨10.1109/TGRS.2012.2185934⟩. ⟨hal-00786056⟩