Speaker
Description
ESA’s BIOMASS, launched on April 29, 2025, able to acquire fully polarimetric, interferometric and tomographic information, enables for the first time large scale Pol-InSAR forest height inversion at P-band. The spatial baseline distribution of BIOMASS is optimized for tropical forest height retrieval and tomographic (reflectivity) profile reconstruction, while the satellite’s short revisit time of three days minimizes temporal decorrelation providing a unique opportunity to obtain high-quality forest height maps.
This contribution first provides an assessment of the actual performance of the BIOMASS forest height product at large and local scales, over a variety of forest types and terrain conditions, and discusses its main limitations. The validation is performed agains air- (ALS) and space-borne (GEDI) lidar measurements.
While the correlation between forest height and volumetric across-track interferometric coherence is well established, compensating for non-volumetric decorrelation contributions in the case of BIOMASS remains challenging due to ionospheric propagation effects and complex temporal decorrelation patterns, as well as the parameterisation of the vertical reflectivity profile.
In a second step, these challenges are addressed and possible data processing and algorithmic improvements required to achieve optimum performance are proposed. Different/possible model-based strategies for forest height inversion from BIOMASS acquisitions are discussed, including single-, dual-, and three-baseline scenarios. The different trade-offs are discussed and demonstrated by means of different BIOMASS test cases.