Abstract
A microwave scattering model is a powerful tool for determining relationships between vegetation parameters and backscattering characteristics. The crown shape of the vegetation canopy is an important parameter in forestry and affects the microwave scattering modeling results. However, there are few numerical models or methods to describe the relationships between crown shapes and backscattering features. Using the Modified Tor Vergata Model (MTVM), a microwave scattering model based on the Matrix Doubling Algorithm (MDA), we quantitatively characterized the effects of crown shape on the microwave backscattering coefficients of the vegetation canopy. FEKO was also used as a computational electromagnetic method to make a complement and comparison with MTVM. In a preliminary experiment, the backscattering coefficients of two ideal vegetation canopies with four representative crown shapes (cylinder, cone, inverted cone and ellipsoid) were simulated: MTVM simulations were performed for the L (1.2 GHz), C (5.3 GHz) and X (9.6 GHz) bands in fully polarimetric mode, and FEKO simulations were carried out for the C (5.3 GHz) band at VV and VH polarization. The simulation results show that, for specific input parameters, the mean relative differences in backscattering coefficients due to variations in crown shape are as high as 127%, which demonstrates that the crown shape has a non-negligible influence on microwave backscattering coefficients of the vegetation canopy. In turn, this also suggests that investigation on effects of plant crown shape on microwave backscattering coefficients may have the potential to improve the accuracy of vegetation microwave scattering models, especially in canopies where volume scattering is the predominant mechanism.
Highlights
In a 3D forest backscattering simulation, the Tor Vergata Model (TVM) was introduced to improve the estimate of the canopy volume scattering [18], and the results showed that the TVM could promote the multiple scattering estimate of vegetation canopy
The main aim of this paper is to develop a method to quantitatively describe the effects of crown shape on the microwave backscattering coefficients of the vegetation canopy
The backscattering coefficients of the four canopies with different crown shapes and heights were simulated for canopies
Summary
The backscattering behavior of vegetation targets is important to consider when conducting parameter inversion in remote sensing applications. A microwave scattering model is a powerful tool that can be used to analyze the backscattering characteristics of vegetation in a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image. The accuracy of a microwave remote sensing inversion model is inferior to that of a microwave forward scattering model. Based on microwave scattering theory, the microwave scattering model of vegetation is used to establish a functional relationship between vegetation parameters and radar backscattering coefficients. The vegetation microwave scattering model can be grouped into two parts depending on whether it is coherent or not [1]. The incoherent model is based on the radiation transfer theory, and the coherent model relies on the analytical wave theory. In the past 40 years since the Water Cloud Model (WCM)
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