Quantifying the Effect of the Wind on Forest Canopy Height Estimation Using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Systems

The global forests play a significant role in local and global ecosystems and as a result are the subject of remote sensing campaigns. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is a proven technology and is used to image foliage in a variety of daylight and weather conditions. InSAR relies on the collection of multiple SAR images either simultaneously with a single transmitter and multiple receivers separated in space or over time with a single transmitter and receiver observing a forest stand at different times. It is this repeat-pass operation that is of interest in this study as the delay between passes enables an observation of temporal deformations in a forest stand including the impact of wind. We present an approach to quantify the effect of wind on an InSAR system's ability to accurately estimate the canopy height of a forest stand. We propose to create a set of simulated trees and expose each to an impulse wind field. The geometry of each tree as it reacts to the incident wind field will be recorded and imaged by an InSAR simulator such that a temporal history of wind-affected geometries and their corresponding InSAR measurements will be recorded. From these measurements, a relationship between the tree height, mass, density, the simulated scattering phase center, incident angle, and incident wind field will be developed.