The Dutch ROVE Program

In the Netherlands the ROVE team (Radar Observation of VEgetation) investigates the possibilities of radar remote sensing in agriculture. It is an interdisciplinary working group in which five institutes collaborate. Each year, from 1975 to 1980, noncoherent backscatter measurements have been made on different types of vegetations, crops, and bare soils using groups of test fields laid out on a test farm of one of the participating institutes. This approach warrants adequate control over botanical, soil, and surface parameters. For the radar backscatter measurements a short-range FM/CW scatterometer is used mounted on a carriage which is moved along the fields. The combination of the FM/CW principle with movement of the system guarantees a sufficient number of independent observations in a measurement where the illuminated patch is large enough to contain an adequate number of scatterers. So the radar return parameter ?? (or ????) is determined with sufficient accuracy as a function of grazing angle and of time through the growing season. An accurate X-band side-looking airborne radar (SLAR) with digital recording is available for airborne verification experiments. The program is a continuation of the experiments described by the authors at the URSI meeting in Berne in 1974.