Sensitivity of Sentinel-1 to Rain Stored in Temperate Forest
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Vaca, Cesar Cisneros; van der Tol, Christiaan
- Source
- IGARSS 2018 - 2018 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, IGARSS 2018 - 2018 IEEE International. :5330-5333 Jul, 2018
- Subject
- Aerospace
Computing and Processing
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Geoscience
Photonics and Electrooptics
Signal Processing and Analysis
Backscatter
Forestry
Synthetic aperture radar
Sensitivity
Rain
Vegetation mapping
Forest
interception
SAR
radar
Sentinel-1
- Language
- ISSN
- 2153-7003
The sensitivity of radar backscatter to the amount of intercepted rain in a Douglas-fir and a beech stand was analyzed to determine the feasibility of retrieval canopy storage capacity from Sentinel-1 (C-band). On average, backscatter of a wet Douglas-fir canopy is ∼1.5 dB and ∼1 dB higher than the backscatter when the canopy is dry at VH and VV polarization respectively. No consistent differences were found in the case of the beech stand between wet and dry conditions. It is argued that the use of Sentinel-1 to retrieve the amount of intercepted rainfall is limited at best to a reliability of 50% and to canopies with large storage capacity.