Course: Forest Canopy Height Mapping with Radar Interferometry

Written by Claudio Muñoz on

August 17, 2016

Forest canopy height is an essential biophysical parameter for monitoring forest ecosystems. Under specific observation scenarios, Synthetic Aperture Radar sensors can be used to produce wall-to-wall canopy height maps through a technique called Polarimetric Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolInSAR). Data amenable for PolInSAR have been collected by US American and European airborne sensors, and are expected to be available from ESA’s BIOMASS radar mission, planned to launch in 2020.

The Radar course will be held on Thursday 17th November in the afternoon (4 hours long). The instructors will be Naiara Pinto, Marc Simard and Michael Denbina, who are part of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA.

The cost of course is US$30 per person. The participation to the course is strictly restricted to regularly registered ForestSat 2016 participants. For register, you must fill the Course Registration Form from your user account on the website www.forestsat2016.com

This workshop presents a first introduction of the PolInSAR technique. Students will learn basic SAR concepts and work on a hands-on activity with simulated SAR data. We will cover the following topics:

• Typical scattering mechanisms at forest sites.
• PolInSAR sensor observation strategy.
• Canopy height estimation using Random Volume over Ground model.
• Uncertainty sources: temporal decorrelation and spatial heterogeneity.
• Examples from temperate, tropical, and boreal forest.
• Synergies with LiDAR-derived metrics.