The Passive Microwave Remote Sensing of Soil Moisture: the Effect of Tilled Row Structure

The tilled rowstructure is known to be one of the important factors affecting the observations of the microwave emission from a natural surface. Measurements of this effect were carried out with both I and X band radiometers mounted on a mobile truck on a bare 40 m x 45 m row tilled field. The soil moisture content during the measurements ranged from approximately 10 percent to approximately 30 percent by dry weight. The results of these measurements showed that the variations of the antenna temperatures with incident angle theta changed with the azimuthal angle a measured from the row direction. A numerical calculation based on a composite surface roughness was made and found to predict the observed features within the model's limit of accuracy. It was concluded that the difference between the horizontally and vertically polarized temperatures was due to the change in the local angle of field emission within the antenna field of view caused by the large scale row structure.