Incidence angle dependence of the L-band POL-IN-SAR sensitivity at forestry region-ALOS PALSAR study using the Pi-SAR

Forest biomass is one of the key parameters that indicate temporal change of the global continental carbon volumes, and its global estimation is required as described in the Kyoto protocol. NASDA´s ALOS science project strongly intends its estimation either solely by SAR or in conjunction with the other optical sensors and the ground truth data. There have been (or are being) developed SAR based methods to estimate the forest biomass, which utilize the relationship between sigma-zero and biomass quantity, those based on coherence of one day separated C band data and L band radar intensity, and those based on forest tree heights and biomass quantities, etc. For the third category, it is expected that Pol-In-SAR might relate the interferometric phase difference at different polarizations to the tree structures and heights, and two-frequency interferometry relates to the phase center difference to the tree height.