Fusion of optical and microwave remote sensing data for snow cover mapping

Optical remote sensing data and microwave remote sensing data are complementary to each other and hence the fusion of these data would help in improving the classification accuracy. In this paper IRS LISS-III data and Radarsat-1 SAR data are fused using Bayesian formulation of data fusion. For this purpose SAR image is modeled using multiplicative autoregressive random field model. The synthesized SAR image is fused with IRS LISS-III image using a model, which incorporates transition probability to give allowance for temporal ambiguity. Fusion technique is used to improve the classification accuracy of snow related features in Himalayan region, India.