Identification of Forest Structure Changes from L-Band SAR Data: A Tomographic Perspective

Abstract:
The objective of this work is to investigate the possibility of separating, quantifying and characterizing individual structural / dielectric change contributions occurring in forest stands provided by tomographic SAR acquisitions at different times. This analysis is carried out by processing real multi-temporal L-band tomographic data over a temperate forest in the south of Germany. Different types of structural changes are firstly identified by means of high resolution lidar acquisitions. Their mapping into both tomographic reflectivity reconstructions and related structure indices is then derived. Reasons for ambiguities are discussed.