REMOTELY SENSED L-BAND SAR DATA FOR TROPICAL FOREST BIOMASS ESTIMATION

Authors

  • O Hamdan

Keywords:

ALOS PALSAR, SAR backscatter, stand biomass, aboveground biomass

Abstract

HAMDAN O, KHALI AZIZ H & ABD RAHMAN K. 2011. Remotely sensed L-band sar data for tropical
forest biomass estimation. Several attempts have been made to obtain forest stand parameters such as stand
volume, stand density, basal area, biomass and carbon (C) stocks from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data.
However the relationship between these parameters and radar backscatter has been a challenging issue since
the last several years. In this study, L-band ALOS PALSAR satellite image with a spatial resolution of 12.0
m was utilised to identify the relationship between radar backscatter and aboveground biomass of tropical
forest stands. Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) which has about 420 ha of forest area was selected
as the study area. Field survey was conducted in which 30 plots (50 × 50 m, 0.25 ha each) were established
and all trees with diameters at breast height (dbh) of 5 cm and above were inventoried. The calculated plotbased biomass was correlated to the pixels of SAR backscatter corresponding to the plot size on the ground.
The correlation function was used to determine stand biomass of the whole study area. Results showed that
dense forest was sensitive to the backscatter on horizontal–vertical polarised (HV) image compared with
horizontal–horizontal polarised (HH) image. It was also found that the L-band SAR backscatter had good
capability to estimate aboveground biomass in mature stands of tropical forest.

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Published

2022-06-11

How to Cite

O Hamdan. (2022). REMOTELY SENSED L-BAND SAR DATA FOR TROPICAL FOREST BIOMASS ESTIMATION. Journal of Tropical Forest Science (JTFS), 23(3), 318–327. Retrieved from https://jtfs.frim.gov.my/jtfs/article/view/630

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