Forest mapping using multi-temporal polarimetric SAR data in southwest China

Author

Shao, Yun ; Zhang, Fengli ; Xu, Maosong ; Xia, Zhongsheng ; Xie, Chou ; Li, Kun ; Wan, Zi ; Touzi, Ridha

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. of Remote Sensing Sci., Inst. of Remote Sensing Appl., Beijing, China

fYear

2011

fDate

24-29 July 2011

Firstpage

134

Lastpage

137

Abstract

In the southwest of China, Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is anticipated to provide an important tool for forestry inventory because of its all weather capabilities. In this paper, Zhazuo area in Guizhou Province of southwest China, with typical Karst landform, was selected as the test site, and six RADARSAT-2 polarimetric images were used for experiments. Methods for forest mapping based on polarimetric decomposition and multi-temporal polarimetric SAR data fusion were proposed. Experiments showed that polarimetric signatures of forest were significantly different with other targets, and fusion of multi-temporal RADARSAT-2 images can effectively improve image quality and enhance forest and deforestation information.

Keywords

geophysical image processing; radar polarimetry; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; vegetation mapping; Guizhou Province; Karst landform; RADARSAT-2 polarimetric images; Zhazuo area; forest mapping; forestry inventory; image quality; multitemporal polarimetric SAR data; polarimetric decomposition; southwest China; synthetic aperture radar; Agriculture; Backscatter; Forestry; Meteorology; Remote sensing; Scattering; Synthetic aperture radar; Polarimetric; SAR; forest; fusion; mapping;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2011 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Vancouver, BC

ISSN

2153-6996

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1003-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2011.6048916

Filename

6048916