A Common Discontinuous Forest Canopy Model for Optical, Lidar and Radar Remote Sensing: Radar Model Development and Evaluation

Wenge Ni-Meister, Hunter College of The City University of New York, wenge.ni-meister@hunter.cuny.edu (Presenter)
Jing Yuan, Hunter College of The City University of New York, jingyuan92@hotmail.com
Guoqing Sun, NASA GSFC/UMD, guoqing.sun@nasa.gov
Yong Wang, East Carolina University, wangy@ecu.edu
Kenneth Jon Ranson, NASA GSFC, kenneth.j.ranson@nasa.gov

To take full advantages of radar, lidar and passive optical remote sensing data to retrieve vegetation structure parameters and above-ground biomass, A common modeling framework is being developed to use vegetation structure parameters to model radar, lidar and passive optical remote sensing signals. Such a common model will provide a pathway to retrieve vegetation structure parameters through fusion of lidar, radar and passive optical remote sensing data. The commonly used hybrid geometric-optical radiative-transfer (GORT) model family was developed for discontinuous plant canopies, which uses fundamental structure parameters and principles of geometric optics to model scattering and absorption of light by collections of individual plant crowns. It has been applied and well validated to model passive optical remote sensing signals and lidar waveforms using vegetation structure parameters.

Along this line, this study applied the GORT family model for radar backscattering modeling. We extended the Santa Barbara microwave backscattering model for continuous and discontinuous plant canopies from single species to multispecies plant canopies and incorporated the similar vegetation structure inputs used in the GORT model. The modified radar backscattering model predicts backscattering coefficients for mixed discontinuous plant canopies as a sum of scattering from different species weighted by the total biomass of each species. We applied this discontinuous model into two mixed conifer and deciduous forests in Maine. Comparisons of the model results with UAVSAR L-band measurements in two different forest in Maine demonstrate that the modified discontinuous radar backscattering model for mixed/multispecies performs better than single-species mode and homogeneous model and can accurately simulate radar backscattering for dense conifer and deciduous forests. This model shares the same treatment of the canopy structure of the geometric optical family models for optical passive remote sensing and the lidar waveform model. Developing a suite of models for radar, lidar and optical passive remote sensing will set a foundation to developing a physically-based fusion scheme to fuse radar, lidar and optical passive remote sensing data to retrieve vegetation structure and above ground biomass estimates at large scales.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  General Contributions   (Tue 4:35 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

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Poster Location ID: 209