Utilization of Multi-Temporal Microwave Remote Sensing Data within a Geostatistical Regionalization Approach for the Derivation of Soil Texture

Abstract

Land Surface Models (LSM) have become indispensable tools to quantify water and nutrient fluxes in support of land management strategies or the prediction of climate change impacts. However, the utilization of LSM requires soil and vegetation parameters, which are seldom available in high spatial distribution or in an appropriate temporal frequency. As shown in recent studies, the quality of these model input parameters, especially the spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability of soil parameters, has a strong effect on LSM simulations. This paper assesses the potential of microwave remote sensing data for retrieving soil physical properties such as soil texture. Microwave remote sensing is able to penetrate in an imaged media (soil, vegetation), thus being capable of retrieving information beneath such a surface. In this study, airborne remote sensing data acquired at 1.3 GHz and in different polarization is utilized in conjunction with geostatistics to retrieve information about soil texture. The developed approach is validated with in-situ data from different field campaigns carried out over the TERENO test-site “North-Eastern German Lowland Observatorium”. With the proposed approach a high accuracy of the retrieved soil texture with a mean RMSE of 2.42 (Mass-%) could be achieved outperforming classical deterministic and geostatistical approaches.