Future use of the data from the ESA Sentinel-1 mission for operational soil moisture mapping: A multitemporal algorithm

The Sentinel-1 mission will offer the opportunity to obtain C-band radar data characterized by short revisit time, thus allowing the generation of frequent soil moisture maps. This paper presents a multitemporal algorithm that exploits such a short revisit time to perform an operational soil moisture mapping. The procedure assumes the availability of a time series of SAR images that is integrated within a retrieval algorithm based on the Bayesian maximum posterior probability statistical criterion. Preliminary results show that the performances of the multitemporal algorithm are better than those provided by a standard monotemporal one. Its implementation can be demanding in terms of computer resource, but a pipeline processing can be implemented in order to fulfill the temporal requirements of the users.