Biomass estimation of Thetford forest from L-band SAR data: potential and limitations

Author

Rowland, C.S. ; Balzter, H. ; Dawson, T.P. ; Luckman, A. ; Skinner, L. ; Patenaude, G.

Author_Institution

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Cambridgeshire, UK

Volume

4

fYear

2003

fDate

21-25 July 2003

Firstpage

2577

Abstract

This paper summarises the results of two pieces of work (i) a comparison of the relative ability of the AirSAR and E-SAR sensors, to estimate stand volume, age and height, (ii) an analysis of the sensitivity of observed backscatter change to changes in stand height and volume between 1991 (AirSAR data) and 2000 (E-SAR data). In both cases the method employs neural network and linear multivariate models to generate relationships between backscatter and stand volume/age/height. Experiment 1 shows the estimates of tree height, age and timber volume, from the AirSAR and E-SAR sensors have similar levels of accuracy, with the use of the E-SAR coherence data appearing to compensate for the lack of P-band data. The results of experiment 2 show change in height and percentage volume are estimated with a percentage RMSE of less than 10%.

Keywords

forestry; interferometry; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; vegetation mapping; AD 1991 to 2000; AirSAR sensors; E-SAR sensors; Thetford forest; backscattering; biomass detection; interferometry; linear multivariate models; neural network; remote sensing by radar; sensitivity analysis; synthetic aperture radar; timber volume; vegetation mapping; Backscatter; Biomass; Carbon dioxide; Data mining; Environmental factors; Geographic Information Systems; L-band; Neural networks; Polarization; Remote monitoring;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2003. IGARSS '03. Proceedings. 2003 IEEE International

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7929-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2003.1294514

Filename

1294514