Geophysical application of multiple frequency fully polarimetric SAR

Summary form only given. Geophysical processes occur throughout the Earth system including all hydrosphere, atmosphere and Solid Earth. These geophysical processes are monitored using seismic (and acoustic) wave, measuring the changes in the magnetic and gravitational forces across the target areas, or measuring the changes in thermal properties across and surrounding the interested target areas. In this respect, application of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is relatively limited compared to other geophysical survey methods, because SAR observation and related studies rely on the backscattered microwave signal received from the target surface areas through antennae. However, unlike optical remote sensing data, the additional phase information in addition to the amplitude values of processed SAR images allows us to develop interferometric techniques and also the polarimetric decomposition approaches, with which one can distinguish the scattering characteristics of the scattering target(s). Recent availability of fully polarimetric SAR imaging modes, at several frequencies (currently X-, C- and L-bands), has greatly extended the SAR application potential for various geophysics problems.