Radar and ground measurements on wheat fields over the Matera site: An experimental study

This paper describes ground and radar measurements collected on wheat fields over the Matera site in Italy during the 2001 growing season. The objective of the paper is twofold. Firstly to investigate the relationship between the C-band backscatter with wheat biomass and with the underlying soil moisture content. Secondly to provide well documented data in order to validate electromagnetic scattering models for cereal crops. From March to June 2001 six ERS-2 overpasses of the site have been acquired. In addition, eight C-band ground-based scatterometer acquisitions, at HH and VV polarisation, with incidence angles ranging between 23° and 60° have been achieved. Coinciding with ERS-2 and scatterometer acquisitions ground data in terms of soil moisture, wheat biomass and canopy structure have been collected. This paper describes the experiments and present the first data analysis.