Investigation of Environmental Effects on Coherence Loss in SAR Interferometry for Snow Water Equivalent Retrieval

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a promising tool for the retrieval of snow water equivalent (SWE) from space. Due to refraction, the interferometric phase changes with snow depth and density, which is exploited by the InSAR method. While the method was first proposed two decades ago, qualitative research using experimental data analyzing factors affecting retrieval performance remains scarce. In this work, a tower-based 1–10-GHz, fully polarimetric SAR with InSAR capabilities was used to analyze the effect of meteorological events (air temperature, precipitation intensity, and wind) on the observed temporal decorrelation of interferometric image pairs at L-, S-, C-, and X-bands. These factors were found to be causes of decorrelation in snow, being the temperature the critical variable in the case of snowmelt events. Of the analyzed bands, the L-band presented the best coherence conservation properties. In addition, the phase change between pairs with sufficient coherence was applied to generate estimates of changes in SWE, studying the retrieval errors at different bands and over different temporal baselines. SWE accumulation was calculated from 6 h up to 12 days’ temporal baseline over a nonvegetated area. SWE accumulation profiles were successfully reconstructed for short temporal baselines and low frequencies, while an increase in the retrieval error was observed for high frequencies and long temporal baselines, indicating the limitations of higher frequencies for repeat-pass InSAR retrieval. The analysis was also reproduced over a forested area at the L-band with similar results as to the nonvegetated area.