Study of environmental issues with ALOS PALSAR data

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) will carry three advanced sensors for addressing many environmental issues, such as vegetation change, water resource management, disaster and earthquake mitigation, and cryosphere monitoring, in a broad range of earth science disciplines. PALSAR has many unique features in its L-band, multi-imaging mode (high-resolution, ScanSAR, and polarimetric), varying incident angles, and multi-polarization, compared to other SAR satellites operating in the orbit now or in the past. In our research proposal for ALOS research announcement, we focus on the use of PALSAR data in flood management and surface change monitoring for the Yangtze River, detection of surface subsidence in oil field, monitoring of coastal expansion and land cover changes in the Yellow River estuary, and study for surface deformation related to potential volcanic activities, palaeo-environment evolution, and snow and ice etc. Although the launch of ALOS in 2003 makes us unable to give a report of research result with ALOS data, we will present our research plan and expectation with PALSAR and other sensor data, and give some results of our study using other SAR data in relation to the issues being addressed in our research with ALOS data.