Backscatter signatures of wind-thrown forest in satellite SAR images

Author

Eriksson, Leif E B ; Fransson, Johan E S ; Soja, Maciej J. ; Santoro, Maurizio

Author_Institution

Dept. of Earth & Space Sci., Chalmers Univ. of Technol., Gothenburg, Sweden

fYear

2012

fDate

22-27 July 2012

Firstpage

6435

Lastpage

6438

Abstract

Two field experiments have been conducted in Sweden to allow an evaluation of the backscatter signatures of wind-thrown forest from L-band, C-band and X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar. When the trees are felled the backscattered signal from TerraSAR-X (X-band) increase with about 1.5 dB, while for ALOS PALSAR (L-band) a decrease with the same amount is observed. Radar images with fine spatial resolution also show shadowing effects that should be possible to use for identification of storm felled forest.

Keywords

geophysical image processing; geophysical techniques; radar imaging; remote sensing by radar; vegetation; ALOS PALSAR; C-band synthetic aperture radar; L-band synthetic aperture radar; Sweden; TerraSAR-X; X-band synthetic aperture radar; backscatter signatures; radar images; satellite SAR images; storm felled forest identification; wind-thrown forest; Backscatter; Satellites; Shadow mapping; Spaceborne radar; Storms; Synthetic aperture radar; Vegetation; Synthetic Aperture Radar; clear-cut; forestry; storm damage; wind-throw;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Munich

ISSN

2153-6996

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-1160-1

Electronic_ISBN

2153-6996

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2012.6352732

Filename

6352732