A P-band SAR for global forest biomass measurement: The BIOMASS mission

The BIOMASS mission is the Seventh ESA Earth Explorer mission, selected in May 2013, for a launch in 2020. The mission is designed to map the full range of the world´s above-ground forest biomass, and to quantify biomass changes during the mission lifetime, with accuracy and spatial resolution compatible with the needs of national scale inventory and global carbon flux calculations [1]. To achieve this objective, a P-band SAR concept was proposed, based on previous works over the past two decades [2]. During the preparatory phases, six new campaigns have been conducted to address remaining questions on the biomass retrieval algorithms over tropical and boreal forests. The collected datasets comprise the accurate and complete sets of in situ data and P-band SAR data in different modes, namely Polarimetry (PolSAR), Polarimetric SAR Interferometry (PolInSAR) and Tomography (TomoSAR). It is to be noted that the mission will has an initial TomoSAR phase which will cover a part of the world´ forests (10-15%), followed by a nominal phase with global PolSAR and PolInSAR acquisitions.