Moisture retrievals of boreal forest soil using HUT-2D synthetic aperture radiometer

Abstract

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission delivers global surface soil moisture measurements at high temporal resolution, utilizing microwave brightness temperature observations. Retrieval of the soil moisture from measurements over large areas with a vast array of different soils and land usages requires sophisticated algorithms and emission models.To investigate the applicability of the SMOS emission models in a boreal coniferous forest, an airborne measurement campaign was carried out with the HUT-2D airborne L-band 2-D synthetic aperture radiometer, between August 3 and October 5, 2011.