 The study investigates whether vegetation descriptors obtained directly from radar data at Elban can adequately parameterize the semi-empirical backscattering water cloud model, WCM, to support soil moisture retrieval, and found that the vegetation descriptor of backscattering at VH polarization outperformed other descriptors in four crop types based on the soil moisture active passive validation experiment in 2012 in Canada. The study also confirmed that variations in vegetation growth affect the accuracy of soil moisture retrieval, and that dramatic changes in vegetation can undermine the retrieval performance. This article was offered by Zeng Wang, Tianjie Zhao, Jin Xiuqiu, and others.