Performance of PolSAR backscatter and PolInSAR coherence for scattering characterization of forest vegetation using TerraSAR-X data

Abstract

Airborne SAR data has been successfully used for forest height inversion, however there is limited applicability in space borne scenario due to high temporal decorrelation. This study investigates the potential of high resolution fully polarimetric pair of TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X SAR data acquired over Barkot forest region of Uttarakhand state in India to analyze the backscatter and coherence and to test the height inversion algorithms. Yamaguchi decomposition was implemented onto the dataset to express total backscatter as a sum of different scattering components from a single SAR resolution cell. Coherency matrix was used to compute complex coherence for different polarization channels. Forest areas suffered from low coherence due to volume decorrelation whereas dry river bed had shown high coherence. Appropriate perpendicular baseline and hence the interferometric vertical wavenumber was selected in forest height estimation. Coherence amplitude inversion (CAI) approach overestimated the forest height and also resulted in false heights for dry river bed. This limitation was overcome by implementing three stage inversion modeling (TSI) which assumes polarization independent volume coherence and the heights in dry river bed were completely eliminated. The results were validated using ground truth data available for 49 plots, and TSI was found to be more accurate with an average accuracy of 90.15% and RMSE of 2.42 m.