Temporal Decorrelation of Tropical Dense Forest at C-Band: First Insights From the TropiScat-2 Experiment

Abstract

Following the past TropiScat and AfriScat tower-based scatterometer experiments conducted as part of the European Space Agency (ESA) BIOMASS mission preparation activities, a follow-on experiment referred to as TropiScat-2 has been undertaken in French Guiana since March 2018. Based on new capabilities including C-band acquisitions, this letter addresses the question of temporal decorrelation variability at several time scales using a period of 67 days dating back to early August 2018. Overall, C-band coherences have been found very dependent on the reference hour and higher than expected at night (15-min coherences above 0.75 and 1-h coherences above 0.5 75% of the time). Supported by meteorological data from the flux-tower, clear evidence about diurnal convective effects is shown. For the first time, the link with evapotranspiration is pointed out based on a drop of the 15-min coherences going from about 0.8 to 0.2 in less than 1 h (around 7h30) and before the rise of convective winds. Furthermore, the specific impacts of convective winds during the day have been demonstrated using very short timescales (with the spread of coherences at 1 s from 0 to 0.9), whereas it is more difficult to separate these effects from those of water transfer for longer timescales. In addition to providing new insights for the understanding of microwave interactions with dense vegetation, these results should also contribute to widen the capabilities of future companion or high revisit space-borne missions at C-band.