Potential & challenges of polarimetric SAR interferometry techniques for forest parameter estimation in the context of the BIOMASS mission

Abstract

World forests contain a significant amount of carbon that is, in consequence of natural and human induced deforestation and regrowth processes, affected by rapid changes and therefore difficult to quantify in terms of biomass/carbon storage. This uncertainty remains because of the lack of reliable and frequent information of biomass levels on a global scale. Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) could provide the required global and temporal coverage of the world’s forested areas. Innovative new inversion approaches allow today accurate meassurement of vegetation structure arameters such as forest height and biomass. The coherent combination of polarimetric and interferometric SAR at lower frequencies by means of Pol-InSAR is sensitive to the vertical distribution of scattering processes within a resolution cell and can be used for model-based inversion of forest height and structural parameters.