Estimation of Corn Growth by Radar Scatterometer Data

Ground-based polarimetric scatterometers have been effective tools to monitor the growth of crop with multi-polarization and frequencies and various incident angles. An important advantage of these systems that can be exploited is temporal observation of a specific crop target. Polarimetric backscatter data at L-, C- and X-bands were acquired every 10 minutes. We analyzed the relationships between L-, C- and X-band signatures, biophysical measurements over the whole corn growth period. The Vertical transmit and Vertical receive polarization (VV) backscattering coefficients for all bands were greater than those of the Horizontal transmit and Horizontal receive polarization (HH) until early-July, and then thereafter HH-polarization was greater than VV-polarization or Horizontal transmit and Vertical receive polarization (HV) until the harvesting stage (Day Of Year, DOY 240). The results of correlation analysis between the backscattering coefficients for all bands and corn growth data showed that L-band HH-polarization (L-HH) was the most suited for monitoring the fresh weight ($r=0.95^{***}$), dry weight ($r=0.95^{***}$), leaf area index ($r=0.86^{**}$), and vegetation water content ($r=0.93^{***}$). Retrieval equations were developed for estimating corn growth parameters using L-HH. The results indicated that L-HH could be used for estimating the vegetation biophysical parameters considered here with high accuracy. Those results can be useful in determining frequency and polarization of satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar stem and in designing a future ground-based microwave system for a long-term monitoring of corn.