Soil Active Layer Freeze/Thaw Detection Using Combined L- and P-Band Radar Remote Sensing

Abstract:

Monitoring of soil active layer freeze-thaw (FT) dynamics is critical for studying high-latitude ecosystem and environmental changes. We evaluated the potential of inferring FT state dynamics within a tundra soil profile using combined L- and P-band radar remote sensing and forward radiative transfer modeling of backscatter characteristics. A first-order two-layer soil scattering model (FTSS) was developed in this study to analyze soil multi-layer scattering effects. The FTSS was evaluated against other sophisticated modeling approaches and showed comparable performance. The FTSS was then applied to analyzing L- and P-band microwave responses to layered soil. We find that soil volume scattering is rather weak for the two frequencies for frozen or dry soil with mean particle size below 10mm diameter. Dielectric contrast between adjacent soil layers can contribute to total backscatter at both L- and P-band with more significant impact on P-band than L-band signals depending on the depth of soil profile. Combined L- and P-band radar data are shown to have greater utility than single channel observations in detecting soil FT dynamics and dielectric profile inhomogeneity. Further analysis using available airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and in-situ measurements also confirm that soil profile heterogeneity can be effectively detected using combined L- and P-band radar backscatter data. This study demonstrates the potential of lower frequency SARs from airborne missions, including UAV-SAR and AirMOSS, for Arctic and alpine assessment of soil active layer properties.