Soil Moisture Retrieval using a Time-Series Ratio Algorithm for the Nisar Mission

The NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission is currently under development and is scheduled for launch in 2022. The NISAR mission will provide global data sets of Earth land surface dynamics that are critical for multiple Earth Science disciplines including observations of ecosystem carbon and water cycles. Global L-band radar observations at high spatial resolution will be helpful for soil moisture applications. One of the goals of the NISAR mission is to provide a global soil moisture product at 200 m resolution with a global revisit frequency of 6 days. A time-series ratio algorithm was implemented using NISAR simulated SMAPVEX12 UAVSAR data, which is an L-band airborne radar backscatter measurement. For a NISAR-like configuration, backscatter at incidence angles from 30 to 50 degrees was considered in this study. The initial retrieval statistics following comparisons with in-situ ground truth show correlation coefficients (R) to be about 0.81, and the unbiased RMSE to be about 0.06 m3/m3. Results from dual co-polarization and/or cross-polarization modes were evaluated and considered for performance improvement.