Soil salinity mapping using dual-polarized SAR Sentinel-1 imagery

ABSTRACTSoil salinity is a major environmental threat, which has a negative impact on soil productivity and agricultural fields. One of the most promising methods for monitoring affected areas, which has special importance in land management studies, is through remote sensing technologies. While the potential of optical imagery in detecting saline soils is widely investigated, limited studies have been dedicated to assessing the potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery in monitoring soil salinity. Accordingly, this paper deals with soil salinity estimation using Sentinel-1 SAR imagery in an area which is highly affected by salinity hazard. Due to lack of a suitable theoretical model for simulating radar backscatter of soil based on salt contents, we investigated a new method to relate radar intensity to measured in-situ salinity directly. In the first step, Sentinel-1 dual polarized VV (Vertical transmit Vertical receive) and VH (Vertical transmit Horizontal receive) data were acquired from the...