Soil Moisture Estimation in a Vegetated Area Using Combination of AIRSAR and Landsat5-TM Images

High difference between dielectric constant of water (dielectric constant about 80) and dielectric constant of dried soil (dielectric constant about 2–3) makes Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) highly capable in soil moisture estimation. However, there are other factors which affect on radar backscattering coefficient. The most important parameters are vegetation cover, surface roughness and sensor parameters (frequency, polarization and incidence angle). In this paper, the importance of considering the effects of these parameters on SAR backscatter coefficients is shown by comparing different soil moisture estimation models. Moreover, an experimental soil moisture estimation model is developed. It is shown that this model can be used to estimate soil moisture under a variety of vegetation cover densities. The new developed model is based on combination of different indices derived from Landsat5-Thematic Mapper and AIRSAR images. The AIRSAR image is used for extraction of backscattering coefficient and incidence angle while TM image is used for calculation of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Brightness Temperature. Then a soil moisture estimation model which is named as Hybrid model is developed based on integration of all of these parameters. The accuracies of this model are assessed in the NDVI ranges of 0–0.2, 0.2–0.4 and 0.4–0.7 by using SAR data in C band and L band frequencies and also in different polarizations of HH, HV, VV and TP. The results show that for instance in L band with HV polarization, R-square values of 0.728, 0.628 and 0.527 are obtained between ground measured soil moisture and estimated soil moisture values using the Hybrid model for NDVI ranges of 0–0.2, 0.2–0.4 and 0.4–0.7, respectively.