Soil Moisture Estimation at 500m using Sentinel-1: application to Tunisian sites

International audienceThis article aims to propose an estimation of the soil moisture at a spatial resolution of 0.5 km and 6 days temporal resolution using Sentinel-1 data. The proposed approach is based on the change detection technique applied over a series of four-year measurements. The algorithm output, a moisture index is between 0 and 1, 0 for the driest soils, 1 for the wettest soils. The methodology is tested on different sites in Central Tunisia. Soil moisture estimations are compared to soil moisture in-situ measurements. Results show a good correlation between estimation and true measurements, in particular for the African regions