On assessing the uncertainties of high resolution SAR soil moisture products

The objective of this paper is to report on first results obtained by comparing Sentinel-1A SM products, obtained by using the SMOSAR algorithm, with SM measurements recorded in a Southern Italy site equipped with a ground network of 12 stations continuously monitoring soil moisture and temperature at various depths [Balenzano et al., 2014]. The mean spacing between the stations is 0.5km and additional in situ measurements have been conducted to calibrate and validate the quality and the spatial representativeness of SM measurements provided by the network. A time series of Sentinel-1A images, acquired from late 2014 onward, has been transformed into SM maps and their uncertainties have been assessed. The paper discusses the obtained findings and their implications for future work.