SAR imaging of forest structure at longer wavelengths

This paper is focused on the recovery of the vertical structure of forested areas from multi-baseline and multi-polarimetric SAR surveys at P-Band and L-Band. Baseline diversity provides sensitivity to the vertical structure of the vegetation layer, resulting in the possibility to yield Tomographic reconstructions of forested areas. Yet, far more information can be inferred basing on the joint exploitation of baseline and polarization diversity, which allows the decomposition of the SAR signal into ground-only and volume-only contributions. Ground-only contributions provide an easy and viable way to phase calibrate the data stack. Volume-only contributions, if correctly identified, allow a direct imaging of the vegetation layer. Results are shown basing on both P-Band and L-Band airborne data collected in the framework of the ESA campaign BioSAR 2008. The spaceborne case is also considered, basing on simulated BioMass data.