Multisensor SAR analysis for forest monitoring in boreal and tropical forest environments

For many aspects of the human life the world´s forests are crucial. Only microwave remote sensing provides the means of all day weather independent monitoring of those pristine areas. Multi-temporal ENVISAT ASAR and ALOS PALSAR data for mapping boreal forest in central Siberia proved to be quite successful in diverse research projects. So far, TerraSAR-X High Resolution Spotlight images have been effectively used in the verification process of the resulting land cover area maps. Part of this knowledge will be transferred within the framework of the Remote Sensing Survey of the next global Forest Resources Assessment. Altogether 350 TerraSAR-X scenes all over the cloudy tropics will be analysed in a project called FRA-SAR 2010. The combined analysis of ALOS PALSAR, ENVISAT ASAR and TerraSAR-X on five areas inside the project will foster the expertise on forest structure parameters.