1. Soil Moisture Retrieval Under Vegetation Using Dual Polarized PALSAR Data Christian Koyama & Karl Schneider Department of Geosciences University of Cologne IGARSS 2011 Vancouver July 26, 2011

3. ALOS PALSAR Data & Processing

4. Grassland Soil Moisture Retrieval Model

5. High Resolution Surface Soil Moisture Patterns

6. ConclusionsTable of Contents - 02 -

7. Grass layer Layer depth: 5 – 175 cm Dielectric constant: 15 – 25 Blade density: 1000 – 3000/m² Grass biomass: 0.2 – 3.1 kg/m² Thatch layer Layer depth: 2 – 4 cm Dielectric constant: 6 – 70 Soil half space Dielectric constant: 9.7 – 33.8 Texture: clay/silt loam Ground Truth Data (test site and field measurements) - 03 -

8. PALSAR Fine Mode Dual Polarization Data Region: Track 647+648 / Frame 1000+1010 Ground Range Resolution: 15 m Center Frequency: L-band @ 1,270 MHz Chirp Bandwidth: 14 MHz Polarization: HH + HV Off-Nadir Angle: 34.3 deg. 8/2/2007 9/17/2007 5/4/2008 6/2/2008 6/19/2008 7/18/2008 6/22/2009 7/21/2009 9/5/2009 9/22/2009 5/10/2010 6/25/2010 10/21/2009 Track 647 Track 648 Soil moisture Surface roughness Biomass Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June 2010 2007 2008 2009 ALOS PALSAR FBD343 DATA (product description & acquisition overview) - 04 -

9. ALOS PALSAR FBD343 Level 1.1 Multi-looking [C2] Matrix Elements Processing HH Power Image σ0HH HV Power Image σ0HV Multi-Looking Covariance [C2] Matrix Elements Coregistration + Generic Filtering H A alpha span Terrain Geocoding H/A/Alpha Decomposition Radiometric Calibration Geocoding Simplified Processing Chain (basicprocessingand polarimetric decompositionof FBD343) - 05 -

10. 2008-06-02 2008-07-18 2009-07-21 200 400 0 Meters Christian N. Koyama University of Cologne IGARSS 2011 Vancouver, July 26 Dual-pol α/H/span-HSV (H = alpha / S = entropy / V = span)

11. Grass canopy Thatch Matrix soil Thatch Layer Effect - 7 -

12. 2009-07-21 2008-05-04 2007-09-17 2008-06-02 mv = 51.1 SD = 4.2 mv = 34.5 SD = 3.4 mv = 48.7 SD = 4.9 mv = 37.9 SD = 4.4 Alpha [deg.] Alpha [deg.] Alpha [deg.] Alpha [deg.] Entropy Entropy Entropy Entropy Cloude, S.R. (2007): “The Dual Polarisation Entropy/Alpha Decomposition: A PALSAR Case Study, “ In Proceedings of PolInSAR 2007. Grassland H2αPlanes - 8 -

13. Empirical Grassland Parameter Model - 9 -

14. Grassland Soil Moisture Estimation - 10 -

15. 2007-08-02 2007-09-17 Christian N. Koyama University of Cologne IGARSS 2011 Vancouver, July 26 25 75 Surface Soil Moisture Distribution mv [Vol.-%]

17. The retrieval algorithm is suitable to account for varying effects of vegetation and thatch

18. The thatch layer is the major source of attenuation

19. At L-band the amount of above ground grass biomass and its geometric properties can be neglected if <2 kg/m²Conclusions - 12 -

20. Thank you for your attention. Acknowledgements The authors thank the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) for the provision of ALOS PALSAR data through their PI programme (AOALO.3570). Financial support by the SFB/TR32 "Patterns in Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Systems" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) is gratefully acknowledged. christian.koyama@uni-koeln.de www.tr32.de - 13 -

21. 2009-07-21 2009-07-21 2009-07-21 200 400 0 Meters Christian N. Koyama University of Cologne IGARSS 2011 Vancouver, July 26 Dual-pol Pauli-RGB (R = C22 /G = C11-2xC12r+C22 /B = C11)

22. 2008-05-04 2008-06-02 2008-06-19 Christian N. Koyama University of Cologne IGARSS 2011 Vancouver, July 26 25 75 Surface Soil Moisture Distribution mv [Vol.-%]

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