Statistical information of ASAR observations over wetland areas: An interaction model interpretation

This paper presents the results obtained after studying the relation between the statistical parameters that describe the backscattering distribution of junco marshes and their biophysical variables. The results are based on the texture analysis of a time series of Envisat ASAR C-band data (APP mode, V V +HH polarizations) acquired between October 2003 and January 2005 over the Lower Paraná River Delta, Argentina. The image power distributions were analyzed, and we show that the K distribution provides a good fitting of SAR data extracted from wetland observations for both polarizations. We also show that the estimated values of the order parameter of the K distribution can be explained using fieldwork and reasonable assumptions. In order to explore these results, we introduce a radiative transfer based interaction model to simulate the junco marsh σ 0 distribution. After analyzing model simulations, we found evidence that the order parameter is related to the junco plant density distribution inside the junco marsh patch. It is concluded that the order parameter of the K distribution could be a useful parameter to estimate the junco plant density. This result is important for basin hydrodynamic modeling, since marsh plant density is the most important parameter to estimate marsh water conductance.