Soil moisture estimation using ground scatterometer and Sentinel-1 data

Soil moisture (SM) is a crucial criterion for agronomics and the management of water resources, particularly in areas where the socio-economic status and significant source of income depend upon agriculture and related sectors. This paper intends to estimate SM over the vegetative area using a generalized regression neural network (GRNN) and ground scatterometer and compare the results with SM retrieved using Sentinel-1 data. At the same time, random forest regression (RFR) and support vector regression (SVR) models are used for SM estimation. Correlation analysis results concluded that L-band HV-polarization at 300 incidence angle showed the highest correlation with the measured field parameters. This study investigated backscattering coefficients, VV/VH polarization ratio and polarization phase difference over wheat’s entire growth phase to estimate SM. The results indicate that the GRNN with backscattering coefficients and polarization ratio provided the highest accuracy compared to the random forest (RF) and SVR with the root mean square error of 0.093 over the Yavatmal District, Maharashtra, India.