The influence of surface canopy water on the relationship between L-band backscatter and biophysical variables in agricultural monitoring

The presence of surface water on the canopy affects radar backscatter. However, its influence on the relationship between radar backscatter and crop biophysical parameters has not been investigated. The aim of this study was to quantify the influence of surface canopy water (SCW) on the relationship between L-band radar backscatter and...

Microwave remote sensing for agricultural drought monitoring: Recent developments and challenges

Agricultural droughts are extreme events which are often a result of interplays between multiple hydro-meteorological processes. Therefore, assessing drought occurrence, extent, duration and intensity is complex and requires the combined use of multiple variables, such as temperature, rainfall, soil moisture (SM) and vegetation state. The...

Towards including dynamic vegetation parameters in the EUMETSAT H SAF ASCAT soil moisture products

The TU Wien Soil Moisture Retrieval (TUW SMR) approach is used to produce several operational soil moisture products from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) on the Metop series of satellites as part of the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Support to Operational Hydrology and Water Management (H SAF). The incidence angle dependence...

Sentinel-1 cross ratio and vegetation optical depth: A comparison over Europe

Vegetation products based on microwave remote sensing observations, such as Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD), are increasingly used in a variety of applications. One disadvantage is the often coarse spatial resolution of tens of kilometers of products retrieved from microwave observations from spaceborne radiometers and scatterometers. This can...