Evaluation of TerraSAR-X Observations for Wetland InSAR Application

This paper assesses the potential of using space-borne X-band SAR data for monitoring water level changes over wetlands. Our analysis is based on four TerraSAR-X (TSX) observations acquired over the south Florida every 11 day repeat cycle between 2008/04/25 and 2008/05/28. Interferometric processing of the data shows a high level coherence (> 0.35) over both wetland and urban regions maintaining interferometric phase in all three interferograms spanning 11 days. Surprisingly phase in maintained over some of the wetlands even in 33 days spanning interferogram. The high interferometric coherence level suggests that a significant part of the X-band scattered signal interact with lower sections of the vegetation (trunks and branches), because scattering from wind moving canopies cannot support such high coherence level. Our analysis indicates that the high spatial resolution with 11 repeat orbit TSX data suitable for wetland InSAR application.