The contribution of trunk-ground interactions to the SAR backscatter from a coniferous forest

Author

Luckman, A.J. ; Baker, John R.

Author_Institution

Remote Sensing Appl. Dev. Unit, British Nat. Space Centre, Abbots Ripton, UK

Volume

3

fYear

34881

fDate

10-14 Jul1995

Firstpage

2032

Abstract

The overall SAR backscatter from forest targets can be viewed as arising from contributions due to surface scattering, volume scattering and double-bounce scattering from tree trunks and ground The paper demonstrates the presence of double bounce scattering in P-band AIRSAR imagery of a coniferous forest on mountainous terrain in the UK by examining the backscattering coefficient and copolarised phase difference as a function of trunk-ground angle. The high sensitivity of double-bounce scatter to trunk-ground angle as predicted by scattering models is confirmed although for this test site the proportional contribution of this mechanism is lower than that suggested by other studies

Keywords

backscatter; electromagnetic wave polarisation; electromagnetic wave scattering; forestry; radar cross-sections; radar imaging; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; P-band AIRSAR imagery; SAR backscatter; UK; backscattering coefficient; coniferous forest; copolarised phase difference; double-bounce scattering; mountainous terrain; surface scattering; trunk-ground angle; trunk-ground interactions; volume scattering; Azimuth; Backscatter; Forestry; Image resolution; Pixel; Polarization; Radar scattering; Remote sensing; Spatial resolution; Surface topography;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 1995. IGARSS '95. 'Quantitative Remote Sensing for Science and Applications', International

Conference_Location

Firenze

Print_ISBN

0-7803-2567-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.1995.524100

Filename

524100