Modelisation of roughness and microwave scattering of bare soil surfaces based on fractal Brownian geometry

Soil profiles are analysed from the fractal point of view. They are issued from a data base of three dimensional stereoscopic images of surfaces of different soil practices which are considered as isotropic. The fractal Brownian model is used for this description. Fractality is demonstrated for all soils. An excellent analytic fit to the experimental correlation functions is developed with a Brownian model formulation. A new method is introduced to calculate a more stable correlation length. For backscattering calculations, the moment method is used over generated profiles which respect to three parameters: the fractal dimension, the correlation length and the rms height. This numerical model proves the dependence of backscattering on fractal dimension.