Evaluation of multi-temporal ALOS/PALSAR for monitoring the Brazilian Amazon rainforest

The objective of this work was to evaluate a series of ScanSAR images of the Advanced Land Observation Satellite ALOS/PALSAR for monitoring the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. For this, a study area with approximately 6,814 km² was selected in the Mato Grosso State, Brazilian Amazon. This area was covered by two orbits of ALOS/PALSAR providing 16 scenes during the March 2009 to March 2011 time period. The maps available from PRODES (Monitoring of Brazilian Amazon Rainforest) and DETER (Detection of Deforested Areas in Real Time) projects were used for supporting the proposed method. The results showed that there is a need for pre-processing procedures such as balancing the series of ALOS/PALSAR images affected by precipitation occurred before the acquisition date. Then the ALOS/PALSAR could be incorporated into the PRODES and DETER projects for monitoring the Amazon region.