Surface Roughness Parameter Uncertainties on Radar Based Soil Moisture Retrievals

Abstract

Surface roughness variations are often assumed to be negligible for the retrieval of sol moisture. Although previous investigations have suggested that this assumption is reasonable for natural vegetation covers (i.e. Moran et al. 2002), in-situ measurements over plowed agricultural fields (i.e. Callens et al. 2006) have shown that the soil surface roughness can change considerably due to weathering induced by rain.