Vegetation water content retrieval using scatterometer data at X-band

Abstract

The vegetation water content (VWC) of kidney bean crop is retrieved using ground-based multi-temporal, multi-angular and co-polarized scatterometer data at X-band. An outdoor crop-bed was prepared to observe the scatterometer response at HH- and VV-polarizations in the angular range from 20° to 70°. The trend of scattering coefficient is found to decrease for the entire angular range. The present study is carried out to investigate the retrieval for VWC of a kidney bean crop at its nine different growth stages by an empirical relation based on least square optimization method using scatterometer data. The results are found promising for the retrieval of the VWC of kidney bean crop at its several growth stages. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.