A research project aimed at evaluating the microwave remote sensing methods
for producing some basic parameters of land surfaces which influence the h
ydrological cycle, on a regular basis, has been conducted within the framew
ork of the European Northern Hemisphere Climate Processes Land-surface Expe
riment (NOPEX) and Forest-Dynamic and Monitoring (Forest-Dynamo) experiment
s. In this paper, the sensitivity of the backscattering coefficient at C-an
d L-bands to soil moisture, surface roughness and herbaceous and arboreous
biomass has been investigated by analysing experimental data collected with
Synthetic Aperture Radar in Northern Europe by the airborne EMISAR during
the European Multisensor Airborne Campaign (EMAC), organised by the Europea
n Space Agency and in Italy during the Multisensor Airborne Campaign (MAC-9
1) and the Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR-C) experiment, both organised by NASA
with the cooperation of the Italian Space Agency. An analysis of SSM/I (Sp
ecial Sensor Microwave Imager) radiometric satellite images, carried out ov
er several Scandinavian regions, which has shown sensitivity to seasonal ch
anges of vegetation and snow cover of microwave emission, is also reported.
(C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.