The seasonal behavior of interferometric coherence in Boreal forest

The capability of SAR interferometry has been previously demonstrated in va rious applications. In particular, the use of interferometric coherence has shown promising results in forest monitoring, however, mainly in discrimin ating forested and nonforested areas, We have collected ERS-1 and ERS-2 Tan dem data from two Boreal forest test sites in Finland, The data have been p rocessed into interferometric coherence and intensity images. These images have been used to a) compare the behavior of interferometric coherence and intensity for various land-use and forest classes and b) extensive analysis on the behavior of interferometric coherence in Boreal forests as a functi on of stem volume. Based on the observations and the use of a Boreal forest semi-empirical backscattering model, we have developed an empirical model that describes interferometric coherence of Boreal forests using backscatte ring information. The results indicate that coherence is more sensitive to the stem volume than the C-band backscattering intensity, However, the inte nsity and coherence data contain complementary information and therefore, t he use of both data sources is beneficial in the observation of Boreal fore st.