Retrieval of Tropical Forest Height and Above-Ground Biomass Using Airborne P- and L-Band SAR Tomography

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Xiao Liu - , Wuhan University (Author)
  • Lu Zhang - (Author)
  • Xinwei Yang - (Author)
  • Mingsheng Liao - (Author)
  • Wei Li - (Author)

Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar tomography (TomoSAR) at different radar wavelength can be used to measure different structural elements of forests. In this letter, we compared the airborne P- and L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomograms and TomoSAR-measured canopy height model (CHM) and above-ground biomass (AGB) over a tropical forest in Lopé, Gabon. The SAR data sets were acquired by German Aerospace Center (DLR)'s F-SAR system during the AfriSAR2016 campaign. First, the Weighted covariance fitting-based Iterative Spectral Estimator (WISE) was applied to obtain tomograms. CHM was then retrieved based on the canopy phase center derived from the tomograms. Finally, AGB was estimated via an empirical logarithmic model developed from field measurements and the tomographic backscatter power of vegetation layers between 40 and 50 m above ground. Compared with the classical approaches of Capon and Wavelet-based Compressed Sensing, the WISE method can achieve better resolution with higher computational efficiency and reduce the ambiguity level of L-band tomograms successfully. The experimental results also show that there is no substantial difference between P- and L-band TomoCHM, while P-band tomographic intensity is more sensitive than the L-band for the inversion of tropical forest AGB at a resolution of 50 m times 50 m.

Details

Original languageEnglish
JournalIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
Volume19
Publication statusPublished - 2022
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

WOS 000732141500001
Scopus 85104256601

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

Sustainable Development Goals