Soil and Vegetation Water Status Monitoring by Integrating Optical and Microwave Satellite Data

In this paper the potential of integrating optical and microwave data to monitoring vegetation features has been exploited by using experimental data and models. The general idea was to cope the high sensitivity of radar data to water content of vegetation with the high sensitivity of optical data to pigments, thus producing more in-depth information on vegetation status. Two sorghum fields located close to Florence was taken under observation during summers 2022 and 2023, by gathering soil and vegetation parameters and collecting Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images. Backscattering coefficient and some optical indices have been experimentally related to soil and vegetation water content and plant water status. The use of a simple e.m. model allowed estimating the plant water content in the canopy. The obtained results confirmed the validity of the followed approach, although further investigation is needed.