PALSAR-2 and Pi-SAR-L2 - Multi frequency Polarimetric Sensitivity on Disaster

We evaluated the polarimetric sensitivity of the multi frequency syhthetic aperture radars (SARs) for detecting the landslide areas in mountains using the polarimetric SARs. We found that three parameters - the coherence of HH and VV, the polarimetric entropy, and the power ratio of HH/HV - are very effective with L-band SARs, and that the land cover changes from the forest to the landslide can be effectively detected using these three parameters. We tested the X band sensitivity from spaceborne SARs, i.e., Terra SAR X and Cosmo SkyMed, at the same test site, the Totsukawamura area, Nara, Japan. Results showed that X-band SARs is less sensitive to the landslide events. This is because the X-band has less or no signal penetration through the forest while the Lband has larger signal penetration. We have L-C-X simultaneous data acquisitions on Sept. 11-13, 2013 at the Totsukawa-mura area and will describe the multi frequency sensitivity of the landslide disaster sensitivity.