Forest SAR Tomography: Principles and Applications

Abstract

Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) systems are widely used for monitoring vegetation and forested environments. Those that offer large-scale coverage, short revisiting times, and an under-foliage wave-penetration capability have been broadly employed to extract information about the forest structure. Similarly, 3D forest structures that serve as important indicators of productivity and biomass levels can be efficiently estimated using the SAR tomography (TomoSAR) processing technique through multibaseline (MB) image acquisition. This article provides an overview of the main developments in forest TomoSAR during the past two decades.