Multitemporal monitoring of wetlands using simulated radarsat constellation mission compact polarimetric SAR data

The RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) is a future Canadian Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mission to be launched in July 2018. The hybrid polarity SAR architecture will be included in the RCM mission, allowing the acquisition of compact polarimetric (CP) SAR data in wide swath imagery. In this study, we investigate the potential of the RCM CP SAR StripMap medium resolution mode for multi-temporal wetlands monitoring using a time series of simulated RCM CP data. Test site for this study is the Bay of Quinte, located on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, Canada. Results show that the tested RCM CP mode is promising for wetland monitoring through change detection.