Multiscale Analysis of SAR from the Earth Surface

The use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to investigate the earth's surface provides a wealth of useful information. Here we will discuss some recent fractal and multi-fractal techniques used to identify oil spills and the dynamic state of the Ocean as well as the mountain structures in the solid earth. It is important both in the Ocean and in the Atmosphere to be able to parametrize mixing at the Rossby Deformation Radius scale (i.e. most energetic eddy scale) to aid in the prediction of pollutant dispersion. Results presented here aim to identify different SAR signatures and at the same time provide calibrations for the different local configurations that allow to predict the behaviour of different tracers in the sea surface, in the atmosphere or in the earth. We also compare different SAR images of the Eastern Pyrenees, evaluating the changes in structure as a function of average height. The multiple correlations between HH HV VV polarizations and the images are used to calculate the fractal dimension with the Box- Counting method. The distribution of the boxes is accomplished systematically for each SAR intensity level, the intersection of these boxes with the images gives N( ) boxes with a non void intersection, which may be compared with the standard multifractal formalism.