An evaluation of AIRSAR and SIR-C/XSAR images for northern forest ecological studies in Maine, USA

In previous work by the authors, AIRSAR data have been used to characterize forest categories, biomass and spatial patterns of a forest area in Maine, USA. The SIR-C/XSAR missions provided the first opportunity for Earth scientists to receive multi-frequency and multi-polarization SAR data from space from a single platform. In this study, the capabilities of SIR-C/XSAR images for characterizing northern forest are evaluated. The results of using multiple frequency and multiple polarization information to produce forest cover classification, biomass estimates and forest spatial pattern analysis are presented and discussed. An evaluation of the SIR-C/XSAR results with respect to AIRSAR in terms of different wavelengths (i.e. X-band and P-band) and resolution (28 m vs. 12 m) is presented.