Quasi-quantitative relationship between soil moisture andnpolarization characteristics

Besides amplitude, frequency and phase, the polarization is another basic property of the electromagnetic wave. In the remote sensing field, the polarization is mainly applied in active detection systems of radar and iidar. This paper presents the quantitative relationship between soil moisture and polarization signatures in a certain type of soil in a farm. And this relationship is expected to be introduced on agriculture and hydrology ultimately. The experiments were performed both in the laboratory and the field. Soil samples with different moisture contents were measured at three wavebands on visible spectrum,and at several viewing angles in the plane of incidence. The polarization signature was indicated by the multi-band and multi-angle degree of linear polarization (DOLP) in this paper. The soil moisture were divided into five levels according to the properties of DOLP curves, namely, the quasi-quantitative relationship between soil moisture and its polarization signature were established. The percentages of soil moisture of the five levels are:≤10%, 10%-20%, 20%-40%, 40%-56% and >56%,respectively. Although this division for soil moisture is on a rather large scale, it will meet the precision of application agricultural and hydrologic remote sensing.