Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry
Forest height is a key parameter in forestry. SAR interferometry (InSAR) techniques have been extensively adopted to retrieve digital elevation models (DEM) to give a representation of the continuous variation of the Earth’s topography, including forests. Unfortunately, InSAR has been proven to fail...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2022-03-01
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| Series: | Earth |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4834/3/1/29 |
| _version_ | 1797446807530242048 |
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| author | Samuele De Petris Filippo Sarvia Enrico Borgogno-Mondino |
| author_facet | Samuele De Petris Filippo Sarvia Enrico Borgogno-Mondino |
| author_sort | Samuele De Petris |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Forest height is a key parameter in forestry. SAR interferometry (InSAR) techniques have been extensively adopted to retrieve digital elevation models (DEM) to give a representation of the continuous variation of the Earth’s topography, including forests. Unfortunately, InSAR has been proven to fail over vegetation due to low coherence values; therefore, all phase unwrapping algorithms tend to avoid these areas, making InSAR-derived DEM over vegetation unreliable. In this work, a sensitivity analysis was performed with the aim of properly initializing the relevant operational parameters (baseline and multilooking factor) to maximize the theoretical accuracy of the height difference between the forest and reference point. Some scenarios were proposed to test the resulting “optimal values”, as estimated at the previous step. A simple model was additionally proposed and calibrated, aimed at predicting the optimal baseline value (and therefore image pair selection) for height uncertainty minimization. All our analyses were conducted using free available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to support the operational transfer into the forest sector. Finally, the potential uncertainty affecting resulting height measures was quantified, showing that a value lower than 5 m can be expected once all user-dependent parameters (i.e., baseline, multilooking factor, temporal baseline) are properly tuned. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-09T13:45:54Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-22bf531dbee64db89864b35679a3bb88 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2673-4834 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-09T13:45:54Z |
| publishDate | 2022-03-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Earth |
| spelling | doaj.art-22bf531dbee64db89864b35679a3bb882023-11-30T20:59:46ZengMDPI AGEarth2673-48342022-03-013147949210.3390/earth3010029Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 InterferometrySamuele De Petris0Filippo Sarvia1Enrico Borgogno-Mondino2Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Science, University of Torino, L.go Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco, ItalyDepartment of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Science, University of Torino, L.go Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco, ItalyDepartment of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Science, University of Torino, L.go Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco, ItalyForest height is a key parameter in forestry. SAR interferometry (InSAR) techniques have been extensively adopted to retrieve digital elevation models (DEM) to give a representation of the continuous variation of the Earth’s topography, including forests. Unfortunately, InSAR has been proven to fail over vegetation due to low coherence values; therefore, all phase unwrapping algorithms tend to avoid these areas, making InSAR-derived DEM over vegetation unreliable. In this work, a sensitivity analysis was performed with the aim of properly initializing the relevant operational parameters (baseline and multilooking factor) to maximize the theoretical accuracy of the height difference between the forest and reference point. Some scenarios were proposed to test the resulting “optimal values”, as estimated at the previous step. A simple model was additionally proposed and calibrated, aimed at predicting the optimal baseline value (and therefore image pair selection) for height uncertainty minimization. All our analyses were conducted using free available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to support the operational transfer into the forest sector. Finally, the potential uncertainty affecting resulting height measures was quantified, showing that a value lower than 5 m can be expected once all user-dependent parameters (i.e., baseline, multilooking factor, temporal baseline) are properly tuned.https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4834/3/1/29Sentinel-1SARinterferometryphase unwrapping avoidingforest heightuncertainty assessment |
| spellingShingle | Samuele De Petris Filippo Sarvia Enrico Borgogno-Mondino Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry Earth Sentinel-1 SAR interferometry phase unwrapping avoiding forest height uncertainty assessment |
| title | Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry |
| title_full | Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry |
| title_fullStr | Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry |
| title_full_unstemmed | Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry |
| title_short | Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry |
| title_sort | uncertainties and perspectives on forest height estimates by sentinel 1 interferometry |
| topic | Sentinel-1 SAR interferometry phase unwrapping avoiding forest height uncertainty assessment |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4834/3/1/29 |
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