Advances in soil moisture retrieval from synthetic aperture radar and hydrological applications

The sensitivity of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to soil moisture is well established, however, the retrieval of soil moisture from SAR is confounded by the effects of surface roughness and vegetation. This difficulty has resulted in limited applications of SAR as an operational source of soil moisture in hydrology despite the demonstrated benefits of high-resolution distributed soil moisture. Technical and methodological advances such as …