Estimating vegetation and surface topographic parameters from multibase radar radar interferometry

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (INSAR) data are sensitive to characteristics of the vertical distribution of vegetation and the underlying surface topography, both of which are of critical importance in successional ecological modeling and hydrology. However, even with the simplest scattering model, the number of parameters describing the vegetation and surface topography needed to characterize the INSAR response exceeds the number of independent INSAR observations. Introducing INSAR measurements across two baselines extends the observation set and potentially enables the estimation of all the parameters in a homogeneous-layer scattering model described in this article. The baseline lengths and INSAR accuracies needed for multibaseline INSAR parameter estimation are discussed. A demonstration of multibaseline INSAR with TOPSAR data over the BOREAS Southern Test Site yields estimates of the vegetation layer depths and extinction properties