Forest Spatial Structure Enhancing Non-Gaussian Texture in Airborne L-Band Polsar Images

In this paper, results of texture analyses over coniferous forests using airborne L-band POLSAR data are shown. Interestingly, field experiments have disclosed existence of patch-like sparse areas in a forest division where low order parameters of the K-distribution are calculated in the texture analyses. In order to validate that the observed non-Gaussian texture is related to existence of the patch-like sparse forests, the two-component decomposition method is applied. It is successfully revealed that there is spotted high contribution of ground (double-bounce or direct) scattering in the highly textured forest division. Furthermore, difference of the ground contribution between polarization channels could encourage our understanding of polarimetric variation of the forest texture.