The contribution of spaceborne SAR interferometry to geomorphological analyses

Interferometric SAR data are used to derive morphometric terrain attributes required by geomorphological and hydrogeological applications. Instead of generating an interferometric Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and subsequently derive the terrain attributes, we compute these quantities directly from the interferogram. Experiments demonstrate that, when compared with traditional DTM-based measures, SAR based attributes seem more stable and offer best performances. Results shown in this paper have been obtained by processing ERS-1/2 SAR data referring to a typical Alpine mountain basin.