Abstract
The mangroves of the Rufiji Delta are an important habitat and resource. The mangrove forest reserve is home to an indigenous population and has been under pressure from an influx of migrants from the landward side of the delta. Timely and effective forest management is needed to preserve the delta and mangrove forest. Here, we investigate the potential of polarimetric target decomposition for mangrove forest monitoring and analysis. Using three ALOS PALSAR images, we show that L-band polarimetry is capable of mapping mangrove dynamics and is sensitive to stand structure and the hydro-geomorphology of stands. Entropy-alpha-anisotropy and incoherent target decompositions provided valuable measures of scattering behavior related to forest structure. Little difference was found between Yamaguchi and Arii decompositions, despite the conceptual differences between these models. Using these models, we were able to differentiate the scattering behavior of the four main species found in the delta, though classification was impractical due to the lack of pure stands. Scattering differences related to season were attributed primarily to differences in ground moisture or inundation. This is the first time mangrove species have been identified by their scattering behavior in L-band polarimetric data. These results suggest higher resolution L-band quad-polarized imagery, such as from PALSAR-2, may be a powerful tool for mangrove species mapping.
Highlights
The mangrove forests of the Rufiji Delta are an important habitat and the largest estuarine mangrove area in East Africa
This is the first known study to investigate the spatio-temporal patterns of backscatter mechanisms in mangrove forests using target decompositions
Some differences between mangrove species of the Rufiji Delta are evident in entropy-anisotropy-alpha
Summary
Backscatter coefficients from co- and cross-polarized data have been used to estimate mangrove forest biomass up to a cut-off at 100–140 Mgha1 [10] Nor does simple change detection provide information on backscatter processes and the scattering responses of canopy, trunk and ground surface elements. They analyzed the polarimetric response of mangroves at C-, L- and P-band They were able to identify growth stages using the ratio of co- and cross-polarization backscatter (the polarization ratio); L-band data were effective. Little attention has been given in the literature to polarimetric target decompositions for mangrove forest analyses despite a range of methods developed for the analysis of vegetation polarimetric responses This is a significant knowledge gap given the increasing availability of polarimetric L-band SAR data and the continued development of target decompositions for vegetation-related analyses.
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