Parametric analysis of synthetic aperture radar data for characterization of deciduous forest stands

The SAR sensor parameters that affect the estimation of deciduous forest stand characteristics were examined using data sets for the Gulf Coastal Plain region, acquired by the NASA/JPL multipolarization airborne SAR. In the regression analysis, the mean digital-number values of the three polarization data are used as the independent variables to estimate the average tree height (HT), basal area (BA), and total-tree biomass (TBM). The following results were obtained: (1) in the case of simple regression and using 28 plots, vertical-vertical (VV) polarization yielded the largest correlation coefficients (r) in estimating HT, BA, and TBM; (2) in the case of multiple regression, the horizontal-horizontal (HH) and VV polarization combination yielded the largest r value in estimating HT, while the VH and HH polarization combination yielded the largest r values in estimating BA and TBM. With the addition of a third polarization, the increase in r values is insignificant.