SENTINEL-1 for wheat mapping and soil moisture retrieval

The main objective of this study is to assess the use of Sentinel-1 (S-1) data for surface soil moisture (SSM) retrieval and wheat mapping (WM) at high spatial resolution (e.g. 100–500m), which constitute valuable information for improving crop yield forecast at large scale. A knowledge based classification method and a SSM retrieval algorithm, developed in view of the European Space Agency Sentinel-1 mission, have been applied to a time series of S-1A data collected from October 2014 to April 2015 over a well-documented agricultural site in southern Italy. In particular, observations of SSM content recorded by a network of ground stations deployed in an experimental farm have been used to …