PolInSAR for Forest Biomass Retrieval: PALSAR Observations and Model Analysis

This paper presents a new approach to the exploitation of polarimetric and interferometric (POLINSAR) data for the quantitative estimation of the forest height and, in general, of forest parameters. Our procedure aims to match simulations from the coherent scattering model PolSARProSim and real measurables. First, a parametric model analysis is used to study the dependence of the interferometric coherence versus forest height, canopy density and terrain slope. Secondly, we show the separation of scattering phase centers on PALSAR data acquired over the Amazon forest. Finally, we perform a preliminary forest height inversion based on the sensitivity of coherence versus forest height. The same procedure can be applied to a compact polarimetric (CP) data-set. In this case, we introduce a full POLINSAR (FP) reconstruction algorithm based on symmetry properties of geophysical media.