2017 Volume 37 Issue 2 Pages 105-111
High resolution land surface geophysical products, such as soil moisture, surface roughness and vegetation water content, are essential for variety of applications ranging from water management to regional climate predictions. In India high resolution geophysical products, in particular soil moisture, could form a critical source of information from sowing of seeds to scheduling irrigation activities during the critical phenophases of the crops leading to optimal water management in farming activities. In this work we used recently developed radar algorithm that was formulated for near real-time soil moisture mapping from satellite data. This algorithm also provides roughness and vegetation information as byproducts and, therefore, is independent of ancillary information about these parameters. The algorithm was tested earlier using airborne and satellite radar observations. Present study provides a preliminary analysis of ALOS PALSAR datasets available over a well monitored watershed, “Berambadi” in Karnataka, in Southern India. Results showed potential of ALOS PALSAR data in mapping high resolution geophysical products towards highly awaited hydrological and agricultural applications in India.
