Evaluation of surface soil moisture models over heterogeneous agricultural plots using L-band SAR observations

Abstract

The goal of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of surface soil moisture models based on L-band SAR data at two different crop stages in typical Indian agricultural plots. Agricultural fields examined include paddy, tomato, sugarcane, at two distinct crop stages, and a reference fallow field. Among the evaluated models, X-Bragg model underestimates soil moisture in all agricultural fields, whereas the Oh 2004 model fits into three agricultural plots for two crop stages without any necessity of auxiliary field information. All models underperformed in the case of sugarcane at the grand growth stage. Although WCM gave best result, it came at the cost of field data utilized to calibrate model parameters. Overall, the Oh 2004 model outperforms other models across crop types and growth stages. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only study that deals with soil moisture estimations at the plot scale across different crops.

Keywords:

• Soil moisture mapping
• L-band
• backscattering model
• water cloud model
• SAR

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The data presented in this study is from my Ph.D. work and still I have work to go through with this data. So till my Ph.D. awarded I cannot share the data.