Extraction of Forest Biophysical Parameters Using Polarimetric SAR

There is a continual pressing need for the ability to produce accurate, quick and cost-effective forest inventories to assist with forest management and the development of ecological models. Canada Space Agency´s recently launched Radarsat-2 offers the ability to significantly advance this field with its multi-temporal and fully polarimetric C-band SAR capabilities. To explore the usefulness of C-band fully polarimetric data for modeling forest biophysical parameters, Convair-580 polarimetric C-band SAR data have been acquired over the Petawawa Research Forest in Ontario, Canada. An inventory of more than 1600 forest stands with information on species, age, canopy closure, height, stocking, basal area and volume have been obtained in order to determine which SAR parameters are most related to each of these biophysical parameters. The VV polarization, target anisotropy, ratios of the radar cross-section measurements and the order parameter of the K-distributed SAR clutter were found to consistently produce the strongest relationships.