Development of Algorithms for the Estimation of Hydrological Parameters Combining Cosmo-Skymed and Sentinel Time Series with in Situ Measurements

Abstract

The collaborative research project 'ALGORITHMS' (20192021) between the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Institute of Applied Physics of the National Research Council of Italy (IFAC-CNR) aims to develop innovative algorithms to estimate the main hydrological parameters (e.g. soil moisture content, vegetation properties, snow water equivalent). The proposed algorithms combine Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), multispectral and hyperspectral satellite data with in-situ measurements. First results are presented based on retrieval analyses and surveys over the test sites in northern and central Italy, using exceptionally long, consistent and multi-polarized C- and X-band SAR time series from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and ASI's COSMO-SkyMed missions, as well as Copernicus Sentinel2 high resolution multi-spectral imagery.