Quantification of Tropical Forest Biomass and its Changes through Using InSAR Phase Measurements
Abstract
The status of aboveground biomass (AGB) in tropical forests and its changes are essential in monitoring the carbon budget, and the consequent climate change. The remote sensing community has endeavored to measure AGB, forest height, as well as other forest biophysical parameters by utilizing various types of sensors. Among them, Interferometric Sythetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) and/or Polarimetric InSAR (PolInSAR) techniques have proven capable of measuring the forest height to few-meter accuracy. In a recent study, the InSAR phase measurements instead of the widely-used complex InSAR correlation measurements, are examined and utilized to reveal a new estimate of forest-height temporal change, with a height estimation accuracy comparable to or even better than the existing InSAR/PolInSAR methods (few-meter accuracy). Through this method, one is able to detect sub-meter AGB change resulting from forest disturbance and regrowth. This method will be demonstrated with data from the German Aerospace Center (DLR)'s TanDEM-X data over ground validation sites in Brazil (where selective logging is known to occur for some stands) by utilizing an automated Python program that is able to process a time series of TanDEM-X observations as well as to generate the stand-wise forest change information. Due to the reasonable computational cost, this approach along with the automatic program could serve as an important tool for monitoring the global forest change, and thus to better explain the global carbon source versus sink, an essential descriptor of climate change.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMGC41D1120T
- Keywords:
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- 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1620 Climate dynamics;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE