Title :
The science and measurement concepts underlying the BIOMASS mission
Author :
Quegan, Shaun ; Chave, Jerome ; Dall, Jorgen ; Le Toan, Thuy ; Papathanassiou, Kostas ; Rocca, Fabio ; Saatchi, Sassan ; Scipal, Klaus ; Shugart, Hank ; Ulander, Lars ; Williams, Mathew
Author_Institution :
Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics, Univ. of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Abstract :
The BIOMASS mission is designed to provide unique information on the biomass in the world´s forests at spatial and temporal resolutions suitable for characterizing their dynamics and their contribution to carbon cycle estimates. To achieve this it combines biomass estimates from direct inversion of polarimetric backscattering coefficients with Pol-InSAR forest height estimates. The mission will also support important secondary objectives, including sub-surface imaging in arid zones, production of a bare-earth DTM and ice applications, and is optimized to be robust against environmental and ionospheric disturbances.
Keywords :
atmospheric composition; backscatter; forestry; ice; radar interferometry; radar polarimetry; synthetic aperture radar; vegetation mapping; Pol-InSAR forest height estimation; arid zones; bare-earth DTM; biomass estimation; biomass mission; carbon cycle estimation; environmental disturbances; ionospheric disturbances; polarimetric backscattering coefficients; spatial resolution; subsurface imaging; temporal resolution; Biomass; Carbon; Carbon dioxide; Degradation; Educational institutions; Meteorology; Uncertainty; Bayesian methods; Carbon cycle; REDD; biomass; forest height; polarimetric interferometry;
Conference_Titel :
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International
Conference_Location :
Munich
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1160-1
Electronic_ISBN :
2153-6996
DOI :
10.1109/IGARSS.2012.6352350
