Study of Physical Phenomena of Vegetation Using Polarimetric Scattering indices and Entropy

A polarimetric model has been developed to study the temporal growth of different vegetation canopies, and their architecture. Eigen decomposition and coherency matrices are analyzed for completely polarimetric Radarsat-2 data. Polarimetric indices have been formulated using co and cross polarized backscattering coefficients, eigen values and eigen vectors. The polarization indices are used to completely understand the difference between polarized scattering signatures of vegetation in HH and VV polarizations. In this study, two decomposition techniques have been used like Freeman-Durden and H/A/α and their volume scattering and entropy components in conjunction with co and cross polarized indices are analyzed. This qualitative evaluation of vegetation parameters and growth stage are found to work better with polarimetric complex SAR data rather than using amplitude imagery.