RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREST STAND PARAMETERS AND MULTI-BAND SAR BACKSCATTERING

Newly developing SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) sensors commonly include high resolution X-band those data are expected to contribute various applications. Recent few studies are presenting potential of X-band SAR data in forest related application. This study tried to investigate the relationship between forest stand parameters and multi-band SAR normalized backscattering. Multi-band SAR data was radiometric corrected to compare signal from different forest stand condition. Then correlation coefficients were estimated between attribute of forest stand map and normalized backscattering coefficients. Although overall correlation coefficients are not high, only X-band shows strong relationship with DBH class than other bands. The signal of C- and L-band is composed of a large number of discrete tree components such as leaves, stems, even background soil. In forest, strength of radar backscattering is affected by complex parameters. Further study might be considered more various forest stand parameters such as canopy density, stand height, volume, and biomass.