Analysis of geosar dual-band InSAR data for peruvian forest

At present there is no consensus as to which remote sensing technologies are appropriate for tropical forest biomass estimation. Cloud cover in the tropics and biomass saturation suggest that a combination of low-frequency SAR and interferometry (either PolInSAR or dual-band interferometric SAR DBInSAR) could provide a solution. Tropical forest biomass recovery using X-P DBInSAR has been demonstrated from an airborne platform using the X-P DEM height difference. This height is known to be considerably lower than the tree height as a result of penetration of microwaves into the canopy that can be significant even at X-band. We model the penetration using the RVOG model and show that in the strong attenuation approximation the interferometric coherence magnitude can be used to estimate penetration depth. We compare the model with GeoSAR DBInSAR observations of Peruvian forest, and, by comparison with LiDAR data, show that the GeoSAR Xband interferometric height can be corrected towards the upper canopy using knowledge of the coherence magnitude combined with the high-frequency "X-RVOG" model. We employ the corrected height with a biomass inversion equation derived from plot samples covered in the Peru campaign and generate a map of above ground forest biomass.