Abstract. Soil moisture retrieval from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) using state-of-the-art backscatter models is not fully operational at present, mainly due to difficulties involved in the parameterisation of soil surface roughness. Recently, increasing interest has been drawn to the use of calibrated or effective roughness parameters, as they circumvent issues known to the parameterisation of fieldmeasured roughness. This paper analyses effective roughness parameters derived from C-and L-band SAR observations over a large number of agricultural seedbed sites in Europe. It shows that parameters may largely differ between SAR acquisitions, as they are related to the observed backscatter coefficients and variations in the local incidence angle. Therefore, a statistical model is developed that allows for estimating effective roughness parameters from microwave backscatter observations. Subsequently, these parameters can be propagated through the Integral Equation Model (IEM) for soil moisture retrieval. It is shown that fairly accurate soil moisture results are obtained both at Cand L-band, with an RMSE ranging between 4 vol% and 6.5 vol%.
IGRAs, especially T-SPOT.TB, are more effective at detecting TB infection than TST. Despite their higher cost, they have added value and can be requested in addition to TST.
Soil moisture retrieval from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) using state-of-the-art backscatter models is not yet fully operational at present, mainly due to difficulties involved in the parameterisation of soil surface roughness. Recently, increasing interest has been drawn to the use of calibrated or effective roughness parameters, as they circumvent issues known to the parameterisation of field-measured roughness. This paper analyses effective roughness parameters derived from C- and L-band SAR observations over a large number of agricultural seedbed sites in Europe and furthermore shows that parameters may largely differ between SAR acquisitions, as they are related to the observed backscatter coefficients and variations in the local incidence angle. Therefore, a statistical model is developed that allows the estimation of effective roughness parameters from microwave backscatter observations. Subsequently, these parameters can be propagated through the Integral Equation Model (IEM) for soil moisture retrieval. It is shown that fairly accurate soil moisture results are obtained both at C- and L-band, with an RMSE ranging between 4 vol% and 6.5 vol%
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