Title :
CARABAS measurements of coniferous forest stem volume on sloping terrain
Author :
Smith, Gary ; Ulander, Lars M H ; Fransson, Johan E S ; Walter, Fredrik
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Radio & Space Sci., Chalmers Univ. of Technol., Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract :
Low frequency SAR has shown good results for the retrieval of stem volume in coniferous forests, where the scattering strength is directly related to the volume of the trunk. However, since the scattering is dominated by the trunk-ground dihedral mechanism, it is also sensitive to the topography (i.e. angle between trunk and ground). Using data from CARABAS, we show how the backscattering is sensitive to the topography and radar viewing geometry. However, unlike higher frequencies, the VHF scattering from trees on moderate slopes is still dominated by the trunk-ground interaction
Keywords :
airborne radar; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; vegetation mapping; 20 to 90 MHz; CARABAS data; CARABAS measurements; VHF scattering; airborne SAR; backscattering; coniferous forest stem volume; scattering strength; sloping terrain; synthetic aperture radar; topography; trunk volume; trunk-ground dihedral mechanism; trunk-ground interaction; viewing geometry; Backscatter; Bandwidth; Calibration; Dielectrics; Frequency; Reflectivity; Scattering; Signal to noise ratio; Surface topography; Volume measurement;
Conference_Titel :
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2001. IGARSS '01. IEEE 2001 International
Conference_Location :
Sydney, NSW
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7031-7
DOI :
10.1109/IGARSS.2001.978288
