VOLUME 73, NUMBER 3
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE
SENSING
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY
AND REMOTE SENSING
Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) involves the use of two
or more SAR images of the same area to extract landscape
topography and its subtle deformation patterns as well as
land cover characteristics. InSAR provides a great tool for
natural hazard monitoring and natural resource management
such as imaging earthquake displacement, mapping ground
surface deformation at volcanoes, documenting land surface
deformation associated with fluid withdrawal, recording
movement of glaciers, mapping water-level changes over
wetlands, constructing digital elevation models, characterizing
land covers and their changes, etc. The cover figure
illustrates one of diverse applications of InSAR technique– imaging water-level changes over wetlands. An InSAR
image from the C-band (wavelength of 5.7 cm) Canadian
Radarsat-1 satellite captured the dynamic changes in waterlevel
over a portion of the swamp forest near southeastern
Louisiana between May 22 and June 15, 2003. Each fringe
(full color cycle) represents a 3.1-cm change in water-level.
The total water-level change was more than 30 cm over
the imaged water basin. A future InSAR system with short
revisit times will allow characterizing the temporal evolution
of water-level changes in an unprecedented spatial resolution,
which will improve hydrological modeling predictions
and enhance the assessment of future flood events over
wetlands. Image courtesy of USGS.
ERS-1/2, JERS-1, Radarsat-1, and Envisat satellite imagery
were analysed using differential interferometric synthetic
aperture radar to monitor mine subsidence in Australia with
sub-centimeter accuracy when compared against ground
survey profiles.
Agricultural crop classification capability of single band full
polarization SAR data was quantitatively evaluated with
AIRSAR L-band polarimetric SAR data using different
classification methods.
Several methods to identify the water area during a flash
flood are compared, and an efficient and economical method
for water area classification in high relief mountainous area is
described.
Assessment of the potential improvement within the domain of
temporal resolution using geostationary MSG data for vegetation
monitoring as compared to Polar Orbiting Environmental
Satellite data.
Integration of RS/GIS with statistical analysis was employed to
study the land-use/cover-changes (LUCC) and sediment loads
and their driving forces in an intensively farmed watershed
characterized by a mountainous and hilly topography and
rainy climate.