Title
Estimation of Soil Moisture Index Using Multi-Temporal Sentinel-1 Images over Poyang Lake Ungauged Zone.
Abstract
The C-band radar instruments onboard the two-satellite GMES Sentinel-1 constellation provide global measurements with short revisit time (about six days) and medium spatial resolution (5 x 20 m), which are appropriate for watershed scale hydrological applications. This paper aims to explore the potential of Sentinel-1 for estimating surface soil moisture using a multi-temporal approach. To this end, a linear mixed effects (LME) model was developed over Poyang Lake ungauged zone, using time series Sentinel 1A and 1B images and soil moisture ground measurements from 15 automatic observation sites. The model assumed a linear relationship that varied with both time and space between soil moisture and backscattering coefficient (SM-sigma(0)). Results showed that three LME models developed with different polarized sigma(0) images all meet the European Space Agency (ESA) accuracy requirement for GMES soil moisture product (<= 5% in volume), with the vertical transmit and vertical receive (VV) polarized model achieving the best performance. However, the SM-sigma(0) relationship was found to depend strongly on space, making it difficult to predict absolute soil moisture for each grid. Therefore, a relative soil moisture index was then proposed to correct for site effect. When compared with those of the linear fixed effects model, the soil moisture indices predicted by the LME model captured the temporal dynamics of measured soil moisture better, with the overall R-2 and cross-validated R-2 being 0.68 and 0.64, respectively. These results indicate that the LME model can be effectively applied to estimate soil moisture from multi-temporal Sentinel-1 images, which is useful for monitoring flood and drought disasters, and for improving stream flow prediction over ungauged zones.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.3390/rs10010012
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
Field
DocType
Sentinel-1,linear mixed effects model,soil moisture index,Poyang Lake ungauged zone
Radar,Backscatter,Flow (psychology),Remote sensing,Watershed,Water content,Geology,Image resolution,Flood myth,Grid
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
10
1
2
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
8
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yufang Zhang120.37
Jianya Gong254157.06
Kun Sun3426.57
Jianmin Yin420.37
xiaoling chen515527.17