Research on GNSS-IR soil moisture retrieval based on random forest algorithm

Abstract

Abstract Soil moisture (SM) retrieval is of great significance in climate, agriculture, ecology, hydrology, and natural disaster monitoring, and it is one of the essential hydrometeorological parameters studied in the world at present. With the continuous development of the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), a technique called GNSS interferometric reflectometry (GNSS-IR) became widely used in ground SM inversion. Therefore, based on the frequency, amplitude and phase of signal-to-noise ratio residuals (δSNR), this study takes P037 and P043 stations set by UNAVCO in the United States as examples and develops the research of SM inversion from random forest regression (RFR) prediction. The experimental results show that the retrieval accuracy of SM under different practical schemes can be in descending order: L1 + L2 dual frequency combination > L2 single frequency > L1 single frequency. It is confirmed that the experimental scheme based on the L1 + L2 dual-frequency combination is beneficial to the inversion of SM. In the L1 + L2 dual-frequency combination, the prediction set accuracy of the P037 station is as follows: R is 0.796, root mean square error (RMSE) is 0.032 cm3 cm−3, ME is 0.002 cm3 cm−3. The prediction accuracy of the P043 station is as follows: R is 0.858, RMSE is 0.039 cm3 cm−3, ME is −0.009 cm3 cm−3. Among them, the RMSE of the L1 + L2 dual-frequency combination of the two stations has an improvement effect of 13%–37% compared with their single-frequency, which has a noticeable improvement effect. The difference between the SM retrieved by GNSS-IR and the reference value of PBO-H2O is concentrated around 0, further showing the accuracy of SM retrieved by GNSS-IR technology. To sum up, this study considers that SM retrieval based on the RFR model has good reliability and accuracy, which makes GNSS-IR technology an efficient means for SM retrieval. With the continuous improvement of the GNSS system and technology, the application of GNSS-IR technology in SM will become broader.