Polarimetry in remote sensing: basic and applied concepts

One of the great challenges for modern radar is to classify, sort and identify targets of all kinds for military battlespace surveillance as well as for civilian geo-environmental stress change monitoring purposes. Whereas, in military radar utilization of complete polarization scattering matrix radars is not yet fully accepted, in remote sensing on the other hand, radar polarimetry seems to have been accepted as an indispensable tool, and convincing results have been obtained for geo-environmental applications in agriculture, forestry, hydrology, flood plain and rural infrastructure maintenance, volcanology and seismology, archeology, etc. However, there still exists a large void in standardization and proper handling of basic and applied polarimetric theory and concepts. In this paper a succinct assessment of the current state-of-the-art is presented summarizing the basic polarimetry concepts spelled out in Boerner et al. (1997). It is the purpose of this paper to draw attention of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing community to this recent compendium on 'Polarimetry in Remote Sensing'.