Soil moisture retrieval using L-band radiometry: Dependence on soil type and moisture profiles

The Monitoring Underground Soil Experiment (MOUSE) 2004 was conducted at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra (Italy) in May-June 2004. During MOUSE 2004, L-band radiometric observations at vertical and horizontal polarizations of six different bare fields at five incidence angles from 25 degrees to 65 were acquired. Soil moisture and temperature were registered at various depths, and surface roughness was measured with a laser profiler. The radiometric data set was processed using a laboratory-derived expression for the dielectric constant and results were compared with those obtained using dielectric constant values computed with semi-empirical models (Wang & Schmugge [1] and Dobson et al. [2]). Soil moisture values retrieved from the measurements using various dielectric constant models were then compared to the actual soil moisture measured at different depths (0, 5, 10, and 15 cm) to get an indication of the goodness of each model for each soil type, and the depth at which the soil moisture is being remotely sensed for each type.