Influences of Planting Row Orientation on Polarimetric SAR over Corn Fields at C-Band

Abstract

Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) is very useful for monitoring growth of agricultural crops and also the accompanying changes of their physical properties. Due to the sensitivity of SAR backscatter and PolSAR parameters to geometry, they are influenced by planting row characteristics. As there is great interest to derive physical parameters of crops from SAR measurements [1], it has to be examined, which changes in Polarimetry are caused by geometric characteristics and which are driven by the physical parameters of interest. The experimental analysis is performed on a data set acquired by DLRs airborne sensor F-SAR over an agricultural area in Wallerfing (South-Germany) in 2014 and Radarsat-2 (RS-2) data acquired in the same season