GNSS reflectometryfor land surfa CES applications

Abstract

The land surface conditions play an essential role in water and carbon cycles understanding. During the last thirty years, different approaches, based on microwave remote sensing have been developed to estimate surface parameters, describing soil and vegetation cover. In this context, since the 90s', the high availability of measurements coming from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) has created a new area of microwave remote sensing for oceanic and continental surfaces. The GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R), for which GNSS signals are used in a bistatic configuration to monitor and estimate surface parameters (moisture, biomass of vegetation cover, etc) has been exploited. This paper illustrates firstly the physical bases of GNSS-R techniques. It illustrates also an example of GNSS-R application through the airborne GLORI campaigns over the south West of France (agricultural sites, Landes forest). Results illustrate a high potential of GNSS-R observables to retrieve soil moisture and vegetation properties in agricultural and forest areas.