SOFIA, Soil and Forest Information Retrieval by Using RADARSAT-2 Images: First Results of the Project

The project SOFIA (ESA AO 6820) aims at using the data from RADARSAT2 for improving the estimate of land variables such as soil moisture and forest biomass. The following aspects will be investigated: 1) improve the estimation of soil moisture in bare and grassland covered soil at regional scale and in particular adapting the inversion procedures to consider the topography of mountainous regions. Investigate the use of different polarizations and synergy with ALOS L-band data. 2) investigations on the estimation of vegetation biomass from polarimetric data and vegetation stratification procedures 3) the possibility of assimilating the estimated biophysical parameters into hydrological models. The paper will present the first results of the project, by applying the methodologies on a test site, Mazia valley, located in South Tyrol (Northern Italy).