Combined Use of GF-3 and Landsat-8 Satellite Data for Soil Moisture Retrieval over Agricultural Areas Using Artificial Neural Network

Abstract EN

Soil moisture is the basic condition required for crop growth and development.

Gaofen-3 (GF-3) is the first C-band synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite of China, offering broad land and ocean imaging applications, including soil moisture monitoring.

This study developed an approach to estimate soil moisture in agricultural areas from GF-3 data.

An inversion technique based on an artificial neural network (ANN) is introduced.

The neural network was trained and tested on a training sample dataset generated from the Advanced Integral Equation Model.

Incidence angle and HH or VV polarization data were used as input variables of the ANN, with soil moisture content (SMC) and surface roughness as the output variables.

The backscattering contribution from the vegetation was eliminated using the water cloud model (WCM).

The acquired soil backscattering coefficients of GF-3 and in situ measurement data were used to validate the SMC estimation algorithm, which achieved satisfactory results (R2 = 0.736; RMSE = 0.042).

These results highlight the contribution of the combined use of the GF-3 synthetic-aperture radar and Landsat-8 images based on an ANN method for improving SMC estimates and supporting hydrological studies.