Potential use of JERS-1 data for biomass estimation of tropical forest environments in Brazilian Amazonia

The objective of this study is to show the importance and limitations of JERS-1 data as a tool for inventory and monitoring vegetation types and the respective biomass of tropical environments. Several study areas (Acre, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Para and Roraima States) were chosen to collect information about physiognomic and structural characteristics of the vegetation types and their topological aspects at JERS-1 image. The behavior of backscatter signals derived from JERS-1, which were correlated with the variability of biomass of the different formations, is presented. Statistical tests with regression models are used to understand the relation between field survey and microwave data and to verify the possibility to generate the cartography of local biomass for intervals of classes. The general variations of intra-class structure must be considered as a limitation to obtain a highly significant performance on the use of L-band/HH polarization