Multipolarization Microwave Scattering Model for Sahelian Grassland

A coherent scattering formulation is developed for radar remote sensing of Sahelian grassland. This African vegetation is mainly composed of annual grass and shrubs. In the proposed procedure, first, a temporal model for generation of grass and shrub structures, which includes important realistic bo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing 2010-03, Vol.48 (3), p.1416-1432
Main Authors: Monsivais-Huertero, A., Sarabandi, K., Chenerie, I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied geophysics
Backscatter
Blades
Coherent scattering
Computer simulation
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
Grasses
Grasslands
Integral equations
Internal geophysics
Mathematical models
Microwave frequencies
Monte Carlo methods
Monte Carlo simulation
Radar remote sensing
Radar scattering
Remote sensing
Sahelian grassland
Scattering
Shape
Soil
Soil (material)
Statistics
Vegetation
vegetation scattering model
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Summary:A coherent scattering formulation is developed for radar remote sensing of Sahelian grassland. This African vegetation is mainly composed of annual grass and shrubs. In the proposed procedure, first, a temporal model for generation of grass and shrub structures, which includes important realistic botanical information, is implemented. Because we develop a coherent scattering model, preserving the relative position of plant elements in a statistical manner as accurately as possible is very important. Shrubs are reproduced using cylindrical elements which represent trunks, branches, and thin green stems that function as leaves for these shrubs. Their crown shape is highly irregular, but for the most part can be encompassed in an ellipsoidal or cylindrical volume; on the other hand, the grass is represented as a set of cylindrical stalks and blade leaves. The scattered power from each grass element is added because multiple scattering among adjacent elements can be neglected at microwave frequencies. We calculate the soil scattering using the Integral Equation Method and neglect the soil volume scattering which may become significant for dry soil condition at high incidence angles. Backscatter statistics are acquired via a Monte Carlo simulation over a large number of realizations. The accuracy of the model is verified using measured data acquired by the C-band environmental satellite advanced synthetic aperture radar instrument at different incident angles.
ISSN:0196-2892
1558-0644
DOI:10.1109/TGRS.2009.2032173