Sweden covers approximately 450,000 km2, almost 60% consisting of forests. More than 95% of the forests are intensively managed, thus representing a major source of income besides being a substantial carbon sink. Forest resources in Sweden have been quantified since 1923 with on ground surveys at inventory plots. Currently, the national forest inventory (NFI) consists of field plots that are...
Approaches exploiting the complementary information on forest above-ground biomass contained in multi-frequency radar backscatter, considering the variability in the sensitivity of backscatter to biomass dependent on the imaging conditions, have hardly been explored. Based on a set of 225 air- and spaceborne backscatter images acquired at X-, C-, L-, and P-band by TerraSAR-X/Tandem-X,...
Remote sensing represents a powerful tool for an effective monitoring at a global scale of vegetated areas [1-3]. In particular, given the daylight independence and the capability to penetrate clouds, space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems represent a unique solution for the mapping and monitoring of forests.
Sentinel-1, with its large coverage and short revisit-time, is a...
In this study we investigated the potential of dense synthetic aperture radar (SAR) time series collected by the ESA’s Sentinel-1 satellites to detect deforestation and forest degradation areas. Since SAR data are affected by speckle, it is crucial to filter speckle before the time series analysis. Accordingly, we explored the potential of empirical mode decomposition (EMD), a data-driven...
Biomass can be mapped and monitored with interferometric SAR (synthetic aperture radar), where the main clue is based on having a vertical dimension of the forest canopy. While biomass mapping with InSAR requires access to a high-quality DTM, biomass changes can be estimated based on height changes over time. The idea is to demonstrate the ability to derive forest height changes and AGB...
This paper investigates the benefits of integrating multi-baseline polarimetric interferometric SAR (PolInSAR) data with LiDAR measurements using a machine learning approach in order to obtain improved forest canopy height estimates. Multiple interferometric baselines are required to ensure consistent height retrieval performance across a broad range of tree heights. Previous studies have...
Forest are one of the important part of ecosystem. They play a crucial role in the carbon cycle. A significant amount of the carbon is stored in the form of the forest biomass. These forest cover areas and their stored carbon stock are affected by various natural and anthropogenic factors. In the recent years, due to the various factors such as forest fires, climate change, and forests...
Following the TropiScat and AfriScat experiments that took place in French Guiana and Ghana respectively between 2011 and 2017 in the framework of the preparation phase of BIOMASS mission, a new campaign TropiScat-2 has been set up since March 2018. This campaign, located in the experimental site of Paracou in French Guiana, has three major interrelated objectives: First, to extend the time...
Following the TropiScat campaign initiated during the early stages of the Biomass mission preparation activities, the AfriScat campaign has been also supported by ESA in order to consolidate the previous findings, considering two independent cases of dense tropical forests in French Guiana and Ghana respectively. Among these findings, the characteristics of the temporal decorrelation patterns...
Swedish forestry has used remote sensing (RS) data for decades to support and optimize their management. Satellite images were used for manually observing forest extents or support planning of field visits. The introduction of airborne laser scanning (ALS) data has revolutionized the information content by providing 3D data much appreciated by the industry. In addition to local ALS...
The increasing request for accurate maps of ground elevation in many fields of human activity strongly pushed forward this research field. Commercial uses include infrastructure administration, regional planning and risk management; scientific uses range from subsidence analysis to vegetation characterization. Tropical forests represent the most challenging environments for this kind of task:...
Abstract
The mapping of the global forest structure by means of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography (TomoSAR) [1] – [4] is an important motivated issue for the upcoming Tandem-L and BIOMASS space missions. In recent works [5], it has been demonstrated that the forest structure can be characterized from the vegetation layers that compose it, reflected as local maxima in the...
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Tomography (TomoSAR) is an emerging technology to image the 3D structure of the illuminated media. TomoSAR exploits the key feature of microwaves to penetrate into vegetation, snow, and ice, hence providing the possibility to see features that are hidden to optical and hyper-spectral systems. The research on the use of P-Band waves, in particular, has been...
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been used for multiple forest applications like forest cover or biomass estimation. More advances techniques like Polarimetric SAR interferometry (Pol-InSAR) further increases the potential of radar as remote sensing tool for forest applications. Pol-InSAR is able to combine different polarizations of the electromagnetic wave with interferometric techniques...
The availability of multiple Synthetic Aperture radar (SAR) acquisitions separated by different spatial baselines allows to form an imaging aperture in the elevation direction and therefore to estimate a vertical profile of the backscattered power (or reflectivity). This kind of profile depends on the radar frequency and polarization, the acquisition geometry, the 3-D distribution of the...
Active remote sensing techniques based on LIght Detection And Ranging (lidar) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can provide high resolution three-dimensional (3-D) information about forest volumes. Full waveform lidars transmit a pulse and record the continuous distribution of the laser energy (i.e., the full waveform) returned to the sensor after being reflected by the vegetation elements...