The use of microwave and optical data for estimating aerial biomass of the savanna and forest formations at Roraima State, Brazil

The objective of this study is to analyze the behavior of forest and savanna biomass with respect to backscatter signals of radar image and spectral parameters of optical data, using a multiple regression model. It is also discussed briefly the approach and results of generation of fraction-image "vegetation", "soil" and "shade" derived from a linear spectral mixture model applied to TM/Landsat image. The shade component is the variable with the highest coefficient of correlation to biomass, for forest and savanna types, but once this component is present in the regression model, the backscatter variable does not contribute significantly to explain biomass.