A brief review of microwave forest signature measurements in the Netherlands and the perspective for a European research programme

Abstract

Forest radar data sets obtained through recent European airborne radar campaigns are briefly summarized. A description is given of one of the main sensors deployed: the airborne multiband scatterometer DUTSCAT. Some early results obtained with DUTSCAT in the Netherlands, including results of forest-canopy-probing experiments, are discussed. Utilizing experimentally obtained X-band SLAR raw data of forest plantations in the Netherlands the feasibility of a technique—called speckle analysis—to obtain spatial information at the sub-resolution-cell level is shown.