ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
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Articles | Volume V-3-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-V-3-2022-369-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-V-3-2022-369-2022
17 May 2022
 | 17 May 2022

BIOMASS ESTIMATION ALONG A CLIMATIC GRADIENT USING MULTI-FREQUENCY POLARIMETRIC RADAR VEGETATION INDEX

G. J. Chang, Y. Oh, and M. Shoshany

Keywords: ALOS-PALSAR, Biomass, multi-frequency polarimetric radar vegetation index, Sentinel-1, shrublands

Abstract. Monitoring biomass changes in the Mediterranean ecosystems is important for better understanding their responses to climatic and anthropogenic changes. Multi-frequency SAR data (L-band PASLAR and C-band Sentinel-1) is investigated for developing a biomass estimation model along a climatic gradient in Israel. First, the relationships between biomass and transmissivity at various frequencies are discussed. Multi-frequency polarimetric radar vegetation index (MPRVI) is then proposed utilizing the ensemble average of degree of polarization and cross-polarized backscattering coefficients. After randomly partitioning the data for training set and testing set, the new MPRVI-based biomass model is evaluated. It shows a good agreement with reference biomass data with an r-square of 0.899 and a root-mean-squared error (RMSE) of 0.381 kg/m2 and with a relative RMSE (RRMSE) of 10.8%.