Above-Ground Biomass Retrieval over Tropical Forests: A Novel GNSS-R Approach with CyGNSS


Por: Carreno-Luengo, H, Luzi, G, Crosetto, M

Publicada: 1 may 2020
Categoría: Earth and planetary sciences (miscellaneous)

Resumen:
An assessment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CyGNSS) mission for biomass studies is presented in this work on rain, coniferous, dry, and moist tropical forests. The main objective is to investigate the capability of Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometry (GNSS-R) for biomass retrieval over dense forest canopies from a space-borne platform. The potential advantage of CyGNSS, as compared to monostatic Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) missions, relies on the increasing signal attenuation by the vegetation cover, which gradually reduces the coherent scattering component sigma(coh,0). This term can only be collected in a bistatic radar geometry. This point motivates the study of the relationship between several observables derived from Delay Doppler Maps (DDMs) with Above-Ground Biomass (AGB). This assessment is performed at different elevation angles theta(e) as a function of Canopy Height (CH). The selected biomass products are obtained from data collected by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument on-board the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-1). An analysis based on the first derivative of the experimentally derived polynomial fitting functions shows that the sensitivity requirements of the Trailing Edge TE and the reflectivity Gamma reduce with increasing biomass up to similar to 350 and similar to 250 ton/ha over the Congo and Amazon rainforests, respectively. The empirical relationship between TE and Gamma with AGB is further evaluated at optimum angular ranges using Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)-derived Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD), and the Polarization Index (PI). Additionally, the potential influence of Soil Moisture Content (SMC) is investigated over forests with low AGB.

Filiaciones:
Carreno-Luengo, H:
 Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC/CERCA), Barcelona, 08860, Spain

 Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering Department, University of Michigan, 500 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States

Luzi, G:
 Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC/CERCA), Barcelona, 08860, Spain

Crosetto, M:
 Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC/CERCA), Barcelona, 08860, Spain
ISSN: 20724292





Remote Sensing
Editorial
MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, ST ALBAN-ANLAGE 66, CH-4052 BASEL, SWITZERLAND, Suiza
Tipo de documento: Article
Volumen: 12 Número: 9
Páginas:
WOS Id: 000543394000015
imagen gold, Green Submitted, All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access

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