Erosion processes modelling using microwave remote sensing at a catchment scale

Environmental degradation and specifically erosion is a serious and extensive problem in many areas in India. As a part of a new Dutch-Indian initiative a small catchment in Northern India will be equipped and monitored to study environmental degradation processes and in particular soil erosion processes using remote sensing. The emphasis in this study is on the development of robust methods to monitor and study erosion processes using microwave remote sensing. The general objective is capacity building and research development for studies in environmental degradation. In this paper the background is given for the development of a general framework for the application of microwave remote sensing in erosion modeling at catchment scale. Microwave data can be used for estimation of erosion model parameters such as vegetation cover, soil moisture status, surface roughness and topography. But, the main advantage would be to use these types of data to validate model predictions, which otherwise using traditional field surveys would be time and money consuming and sometimes even impossible.