C band radar crops monitoring at high temporal frequency: first results of the MOCTAR campaign

This work is focused on the daily cycle of the backscattering radar coefficient over two different crop Mediterranean types: olive trees and wheat, The MOCTAR experiment consists in the acquisitions of radar fully polarimetric interferometric C-band data acquired continuously at 10 min time step from the top of a tower. The study site is located in semiarid region, near Marrakech, in Morocco. Our first results highlight significant daily variations of intensities and temporal decorrelation, and provide a core database to better explain their link with physical variables such as water content and sapflow.