Validation of Saocom-Estimated Soil Dielectric Constant Using a Bayesian Inference Scheme in Agricultural Fields

In this study, the estimation of soil moisture from a single quad-pol Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image from SAOCOM mission along with a physically based interaction model (two-layer version of the small perturbation method model at the second order) was validated with in-situ measured data in the central region of Argentina. The relationship between microwave backscattering and dielectric constant <tex>$(\epsilon)$</tex> allows for precise estimation of <tex>$\epsilon$</tex> effectively disambiguating the influence of soil roughness in bare soil conditions. Measured dielectric constants from the study area are used for validation.