Polarimetric SAR interferometry for vegetable vertical structure parameters extraction

Polarimetric SAR interferometry is much more sensitive to the distribution of oriented objects in a vegetated land surface than either polarimetric or interferometry alone. In this paper, we propose a polarimetric SAR interferometry technique for the estimation of parameters characterizing the vertical structure vegetated land surfaces. Based on simple physical model, we use SIR-C/X-SAR full polarimetric data to calculate the optimized interferometric coherences. Test site is Tianshan and its surrounding area, where pine trees are planted and the characteristics are well known. As a result, we could estimate the tree height distribution, and the quantitative evaluation is presented to relate the phase center differences and the tree types and the polarization combinations.