Deforestation Detection in Tropical Forests using Scattering Power Decomposition

Tropical forests play an important role for healthy Earth environment. Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has a great potential for forest monitoring because of its penetration capability and retrieval of polarimetric information. This study evaluates the capability of deforestation detection in tropical forests using the six-component scattering power decomposition and quad polarization SAR data. We could clearly distinguish whether an area is a natural forest or not by taking an appropriate window size for ensemble average. The deforestation detection performance achieved an accuracy exceeding the kappa coefficient of 90%.