Forest Height Estimation from TanDEM-X InSAR Coherence Magnitudes Towards Large Scale Applications

Abstract

TanDEM-X experiments have shown that forest height can be estimated with single polarization X-band interferometric coherences. An external digital terrain model (DTM) not only allows to use both coherence magnitude and phase information, but also to overcome X-band penetration limitations. However, DTM information is not available for large areas. Using coherence magnitudes makes height inversion feasible, but it requires a model relating coherence to height. Here we report an experiment using the X-band local phase center variations. Results over a tropical forest site show that in those stands in which the low X-band penetration is not a limitation, the there is a good correlation between the obtained TanDEM-X heights and the heights from Lidar measurements.