The potential of C- and L-band SAR in estimating vegetation biomass: the ERS-1 and JERS-1 experiments

摘要

The sensitivity of backscattering coefficient, measured by ERS-1 and JERS-1 radars, to vegetation biomass is discussed and compared with the best results achieved using multifrequency polarimetric JPL-AIRSAR data. Experimental results show that measurements with JERS-1/L-band and ERS-1/C-band SAR provide the means for detecting vegetation growth. In particular, the C-band signal of ERS radar was found to be very well correlated to forest woody volume.