Characterization of Rape Field Microwave Emission and Implications to Surface Soil Moisture Retrievals

Remote Sensing

Florian Schlenz¹  Joachim Fallmann²  Philip Marzahn¹  Alexander Loew³ 

[1] Department of Geography, University of Munich, Luisenstr. 37, D-80333 Munich, Germany; E-Mails:;Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, D-82467 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany; E-Mail:;Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, KlimaCampus, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany; E-Mail:

关键词: passive microwave remote sensing;    radiometry;    L-band;    soil moisture;    roughness;    Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS);    L-MEB;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs4010247

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

In the course of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission calibration and validation activities, a ground based L-band radiometer ELBARA II was situated at the test site Puch in Southern Germany in the Upper Danube Catchment. The experiment is described and the different data sets acquired are presented. The L-band microwave emission of the biosphere (L-MEB) model that is also used in the SMOS L2 soil moisture algorithm is used to simulate the microwave emission of a winter oilseed rape field in Puch that was also observed by the radiometer. As there is a lack of a rape parameterization for L-MEB the SMOS default parameters for crops are used in a first step which does not lead to satisfying modeling results. Therefore, a new parameterization for L-MEB is developed that allows us to model the microwave emission of a winter oilseed rape field at the test site with better results. The soil moisture retrieval performance of the new parameterization is assessed in different retrieval configurations and the results are discussed. To allow satisfying results, the periods before and after winter have to be modeled with different parameter sets as the vegetation behavior is very different during these two development stages. With the new parameterization it is possible to retrieve soil moisture from multiangular brightness temperature data with a root mean squared error around 0.045–0.051 m³/m³ in a two parameter retrieval with soil moisture and roughness parameter H_r as free parameters.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.