Estimating landscape‐scale vegetation carbon stocks using airborne multi‐frequency polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in the savannahs of north Australia

Derivation of biomass information for semi-arid areas using remote-sensing data

“…Possible applications Example studies Sustainable land-use management -Support drought detection -Give advice to farmers regarding good grazing places -Information on the amount of forage, its quality as well as distribution -Understanding of wildlife feeding patterns -Build up management guidelines on the suitability of specific habitats -Quantifying the effect of grazing intensities -Crop forecasting -Locust forecasting and hatching Rosema (1993), Wylie et al (1995), Du Plessis (1999), Qi and Wallace (2002), Dech et al (2003), Kogan et al (2004), Kawamura et al (2005), Mutanga and Rugege (2006) Fire risk assessment -Fire risk assessment for savannah ecosystems -Selection of sites for controlled burning -Development of early warning systems for fire management -Fuel modelling and fire behaviour simulation Pereira et al (1995), Kraus and Samimi (2002), Sannier et al (2002), Mutanga and Rugege (2006), Verbesselt et al (2006) Climate change and degradation -Understand the exchange of energy and CO 2 between vegetation and the atmosphere -Understand the role these regions play in the biochemical cycles -Examine yield and food production -Assess both degradation and ecosystem recovery -Plan protective measures for areas under high risk of desertification -Assist the decision-making process for the declaration of areas experiencing drought exceptional circumstances Pieper (1988), Kennedy (1989), Rosema (1993), Running et al (1995), Pickup (1996), Imeson and Lavee (1998), McVicar andJupp (1998), Shoshany (2000), Diouf and Lambin (2001), Hirata et al (2001), Moleele et al (2001), Collins et al (2009) …”

“…A further study based on aerial multifrequency polarimetric AIRSAR data for biomass estimation in semi-arid zones has been presented by Collins et al (2009). The radar backscatter was correlated with the basal area using simple linear regression.…”

Sensitivity of multi-source SAR backscatter to changes of forest aboveground biomass

“…A series of studies suggested that a widely applicable relationship exists between biomass and backscatter from L-band SAR for woody vegetation with lower levels of biomass (≤150 Mg·ha −1 ) in tropical [6][7][8], temperate and boreal biomes [9][10][11][12][13]. Both airborne and spaceborne systems were involved in these studies, including airborne instruments such as AIRborne SAR (AIRSAR) and the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle SAR (UAVSAR) developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Experimental-SAR (ESAR) operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), as well as spaceborne instruments such as the first Earth-orbiting satellite SEASAT, Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-B and SAR (SIR-C/XSAR), Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1 (JERS-1), and Phased Array type L-band SAR (PALSAR) on board the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).…”

“…Santos et al [6] utilized the L-HH channel of JERS-1 data in tropical forest-savanna contact zones, and found that the logarithmic and sigmoid functions were adequate to explain the SAR backscatter as a function of forest biomass. Collins et al [7] indicated that the L-HV channel of polarimetric backscatter intensity from AIRSAR was best suited (R 2 = 0.92) for modeling biomass (both above-ground and below-ground) of the tropical savannahs in North Australia. Mitchard et al [8] examined the relationships between field-measured biomass at four study sites in Cameroon, Uganda and Mozambique and L-band HV data from ALOS/PALSAR, and found that biomass estimates based on these relationships were highly significant and similar among sites.…”

Mapping Above-Ground Biomass by Integrating Optical and SAR Imagery: A Case Study of Xixi National Wetland Park, China

“…Other SAR sensors have also been applied in the AGB estimation, such as Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS PalSAR) [28] and airborne OrbiSAR-1 [29]. However, a series of studies shows that the relationship between AGB and backscatter from L-band [30][31][32]. Furthermore, efforts have been made to combine optical and radar remote sensing imagery for AGB mapping [4].…”