Electromagnetic scattering of dense media with application to active and passive microwave remote sensing of terrestrial snow

Abstract

It is of great importance to estimate the amount and the variation of water storage in the form of seasonal snowpack, in order to effectively monitor and manage the water resources all over the world. It is believed that significant temporal changes and spatial changes in local snowpack, regional snowpack and global snow are due to climate change. The Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) is defined as the depth of some hypothetical water which is melted instantaneously from an entire snowpack. Therefore the estimate of SWE is critical to the understanding of the water cycle, water resource management, prediction of climate change, flood forecasting, etc. Microwave remote sensing has been used in estimating SWE for decades. As radar measurement, radiometric measurement, and ground measurement data abound in microwave remote sensing campaigns, it is important to connect the ground measurement to electrical measurement by developing accurate physical models for snow, as well as scattering models for random medium. In this dissertation, Dense Media Radiative Transfer (DMRT) is combined with Quasi-Crystalline Approximation (QCA) and bicontinuous model. The DMRT-QCA and DMRT-bicontinuous are applied to data analysis of recent multi-frequency backscattering coefficients measurements in SnowSAR and SnowScat campaigns respectively. Then DMRT-bicontinuous model is used to study both active and passive remote sensing in the NoSREx campaign. Backscattering enhancement effect is considered. Lastly, the QCA model and the bicontinuous model are compared in microwave scattering as well as the medium characterization. The parameter extraction of these two models from ground measurement are discussed.