Operational Mapping of Soil Moisture Using Synthetic Aperture Radar Data: Application to the Touch Basin (France)

Sensors

Nicolas Baghdadi²  Maelle Aubert²  Olivier Cerdan²  Laurent Franchistéguy¹  Christian Viel⁴  Eric Martin¹  Mehrez Zribi³ 

[1] Météo-France, 42 avenue G. Coriolis, 31057 Toulouse Cedex, France; E-mails:;French Geological Survey (BRGM), BP 36009, 45060 Orléans Cedex 2, France; Phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]; E-mails:;CETP/CNRS, 10/12, avenue de l'Europe, 78140 Velizy, France ; E-mail:;SCHAPI, 42 avenue Coriolis, 31057 Toulouse Cedex, France; E-mail:

关键词: SAR sensors;    soil moisture;    ISBA model;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s7102458

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Soil moisture is a key parameter in different environmental applications, such as hydrology and natural risk assessment. In this paper, surface soil moisture mapping was carried out over a basin in France using satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired in 2006 and 2007 by C-band (5.3 GHz) sensors. The comparison between soil moisture estimated from SAR data and in situ measurements shows good agreement, with a mapping accuracy better than 3%. This result shows that the monitoring of soil moisture from SAR images is possible in operational phase. Moreover, moistures simulated by the operational Météo-France ISBA soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer model in the SIM-Safran-ISBA-Modcou chain were compared to radar moisture estimates to validate its pertinence. The difference between ISBA simulations and radar estimates fluctuates between 0.4 and 10% (RMSE). The comparison between ISBA and gravimetric measurements of the 12 March 2007 shows a RMSE of about 6%. Generally, these results are very encouraging. Results show also that the soil moisture estimated from SAR images is not correlated with the textural units defined in the European Soil Geographical Database (SGDBE) at 1:1000000 scale. However, dependence was observed between texture maps and ISBA moisture. This dependence is induced by the use of the texture map as an input parameter in the ISBA model. Even if this parameter is very important for soil moisture estimations, radar results shown that the textural map scale at 1:1000000 is not appropriate to differentiate moistures zones.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© 2007 by MDPI (http://www.mdpi.org).