Assessment of Soil Classification from Synthetic Aperture Radar
Publication: Geo-Congress 2024
ABSTRACT
The potential of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to derive coastal soil types is discussed. SAR systems, which are all-weather satellites, can provide data during storm events and allow for the derivation of soil type in all conditions, regardless of cloud coverage. SAR images are composed of the energy that is returned after hitting the ground, known as the backscatter. This backscatter is impacted by both radar properties (wavelength of the transmitted signal, incidence angle, and polarization) and terrain characteristics (dielectric properties, surface roughness, and feature orientation). In this study, data from the publicly available C-band Sentinel-1A satellite was used to assess three distinct tidal flats (two fine-grained, one coarse) on the Great Bay Estuary in New Hampshire. Across two polarizations (VV and VH), lower backscatter returns were observed for the finer sites (−20.66 and −18.14 dB for VV polarization and −27.85 and −25.82 dB for VH polarization) and higher responses (−10.79 and −23.99 dB for VV and VH, respectively) were observed for the coarser sites. This demonstrates that there are distinct trends in backscatter response for different soil types, suggesting that tools such as machine learning may be able to derive the soil type.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Geo-Congress 2024
Pages: 594 - 602
History
Published online: Feb 22, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Aerospace engineering
- Climates
- Computer networks
- Computing in civil engineering
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Equipment and machinery
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Hydraulic engineering
- Hydraulic properties
- Meteorology
- Precipitation
- Radar
- Satellites
- Soil classification
- Soil mechanics
- Soil properties
- Space exploration
- Storms
- Surface properties
- Water and water resources
- Weather conditions
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