Interferometric Ground Notching of SAR Images for Estimating Forest Above Ground Biomass
Paper in proceeding, 2018

The effectiveness of SAR tomography in estimating forest Above Ground Biomass (AGB) has been repeatedly demonstrated in the recent years. For tropical rain-forests, analysis from the Paracou test site reveals that the best results are achieved when the backscattered power coming from 30m above the ground is considered. As suggested in previous papers, the most likely reason is that ground scattering acts as a disturbing factor for forest biomass retrieval, as it depends on a number of parameters (like topography, moisture), that do not relate to forest biomass. In this paper we further test this hypothesis by proposing the concept of interferometric ground notching. By taking the difference between two phase calibrated, ground-steered, SAR SLC images a third image is obtained where ground scattering contributions are canceled out, hence the name ground-notched SLC. Results indicate that ground-notched data can effectively retain the features of vegetation-only scattering, including its polarimetric signature and correlation with AGB.

Polarimetry

InSAR

Tomography

Biomass

Author

M. Mariotti d'Alessandro

Polytechnic University of Milan

S. Tebaldini

Polytechnic University of Milan

S. Quegan

University of Sheffield

M. Soja

University of Tasmania

Lars Ulander

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Microwave and Optical Remote Sensing

International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS)

8797-8800
978-1-5386-7150-4 (ISBN)

38th IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS)
Valencia, ,

Subject Categories

Remote Sensing

Agricultural Science

Forest Science

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2018.8517706

ISBN

9781538671504

More information

Latest update

3/21/2023