Dual-Frequency Retrieval of Soil Moisture from L- and S-Band Radar Data for Corn and Soybean

Abstract

Radar backscattering responds differently to soil moisture due to vegetation effects depending on the microwave frequency. The retrieval of soil moisture using a single frequency has been common. In this paper, we study how soil moisture retrieval performs using dual-frequency radar backscattering (L- and S-bands) compared with using L-band only. The dual-frequency inputs increase the amount of independent information, which is expected to reduce the uncertainty in estimating soil moisture. Forward scattering models for corn and soybean fields were previously generated and validated with the L-band for the SMAPVEX12 campaign: they are inverted as an independent test for the retrieval of soil moisture using the SMEX02 campaign data in this paper. It is demonstrated that L-band modeling of forward scattering processes is scalable at the S-band, in that the physics and parameters behind modeling the vegetation effects remain the same between L- and S-bands. Either L- or S-band single-frequency retrieval has reliable performance for soil moisture retrieval. Furthermore, averaging the retrieved soil moisture from both frequencies further improves the retrieval performance. The averaging avoids the determination of the weights of the L- and S-band sigma0 during the cost function minimization. The dual frequency retrieval is evaluated with the unbiased RMSE of 0.031 and 0.057 m3/m3 for corn and soybean, respectively, which are improvements by up to 0.010 and 0.004 m3/m3, compared with single-frequency cases. The findings here can apply to the upcoming NISAR mission featuring L- and S-bands.