Combining interferometric radar and laser altimeter data to improve estimates of topography

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (INSAR) has been used to map terrain topography; however, accuracy is limited because observations are not measurements of true surface topography over vegetated areas. Instead, the measurements, which depend on the sensor and the vegetation, represent some height above the true surface. The authors solve an inverse problem for INSAR scattering to determine surface and vegetation elevations, and then incorporate sparse laser altimeter observations to improve the estimates of surface and vegetation elevations.