Time Series of Polarimetric Indicators and their Potential Relationships with Biophysical Parameters of Agricultural Crops

Abstract:
Quad-pol measurements at L-band acquired during the AGRISAR’06 campaign have been used in order to compute time series of entropy, α angle and anisotropy from an agricultural area with a simultaneous dedicated ground-data acquisition. The study has been focused on winter wheat, maize and rape crops, and the biophysical parameters considered were crop coverage, BBCH phase, Leaf Area Index (LAI), wet biomass and crop height. Time series of these polarimetric indicators and their relationship to crop development parameters and phenological stages have been analyzed. Results reveal the potential of some of these observables for both the detection of particular crop conditions and for continuous crop monitoring. A second part of this work is focused on a preliminary analysis on the potential of hybrid-pol architecture decomposition parameters for agricultural monitoring. Time series of such parameteres have been also computed and their potential sensitivity during the growing season has been addressed.