Application of remote sensing in tropical forests

Cloud cover in tropical humid forests can pose serious operational constraints on Landsat TM and SPOT HRV instrumentation, given their respective orbital frequencies of 16 and 26 days. SAR data intrinsically precludes such problems; the increase of data acquisition frequency to daily rates, as with the NOAA AVHRR instrument, also bears consideration. It is deemed essential that SAR data-related research be expedited, in order to ascertain inherent SAR information for tropical forests in a timely and cost-effective manner.