Detecting and Calculating the Soil Moisture Using Microwave Imagery(Case Study: Miyankale, Mazandaran)

Subject Areas : Journal of Radar and Optical Remote Sensing and GIS

Abolfazl  Rahimabadi ¹ (Department of GIS & RS, Yazd Branch, Islamic Azad University, Yazd, Iran)
Ali Akbar  Jamali ² (Associate Professor, Department of GIS-RS and Natural Engineering, Maybod Branch, Islamic Azad University, Yazd, Iran)

Received: 2019-03-02 Accepted : 2019-05-30 Published : 2019-06-01

Keywords: Soil Moisture, Sentinel-1, SAR, Backscatter Coefficient,

Abstract :

Almost one third of the earth is covered by soil, which has several essential parameters. The soil moisturecontent is one of the essential parameters. The current research calculates the soil moisture content. Thereare known methods to calculate soil moisture; however, a new method has been chosen for this research.Microwave imagery is a novel appropriate way to detect and calculate the amount of moisture in soil. TheSENTINEL-1 with SAR sensor has been a good satellite for research purpose. The microwaves sent bythe satellite to the earth receives the backscatters which has been directly related to the amount ofmoisture. Thus four images were obtained at different time intervals of the year; 21st November 2015, 1stMay 2016, 5th June 2016 and 29th September 2016. The study area of Miyankale is covered by fourimages. Furthermore, to calculate the moisture in Miyankale which was done by another method theresults were finally compared with the percentage measured by satellite imagery. The accuracy of satellitedata is confirmed by measuring the soil moisture by two different methods. The coefficient ofdetermination R2 has been chosen to compare the data and check the microwave imagery. TheR2coefficient is able to compare two independent data. The R2 coefficient is 0.82, 0.82, 0.78 and 0.81 fordifferent time periods. The R2 ranges from 0 to 1, as the R2 values are closer to 1 the moisture obtainedfrom SAR images is confirmed