7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

Abstract: SAR data from a test site in Spain has been investigated to determine
the relationship between forest burn severity and backscatter coefficient.
The analysis showed that at HH and VV polarizations backscatter
increases with burn severity. For cross-polarized beams (HV) backscatter
decreased with burn severity. Backscatter coefficient showed potential for
burn severity estimation in the Mediterranean environment when information
from co- and cross-polarized beams is used jointly and the local incidence
angle is accounted for.
1 - Introduction
BACKSCATTER PROPERTIES OF X- AND C-BAND SAR IN
A MEDITERRANEAN PINE FOREST AFFECTED BY FIRE
M. Tanase
Dpt. of Geography, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, mihai.tanase@tma.ro
J. de la Riva & F. Pérez-Cabello
University of Zaragoza, Spain, delariva@unizar.es; fcabello@unizar.es
M. Santoro
Gamma Remote Sensing AG, Gümligen, Switzerland, santoro@gamma-rs.ch
The high number of forest fires occurring every year constitutes a major
degradation factor of Mediterranean ecosystems. One of the most widely
employed optical-wavelength based spectral indexes for burn severity
assessment is the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) (Key and
Benson, 2006). An alternative method for burned severity evaluation is the
use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data which provides information related
to forest structure, removal of leaves and branches by fire directly influencing
the backscattered energy. Preliminary studies confirmed the potential
of SAR data for remote estimation of burn severity (Tanase et al.,
2009). This work is focused on the evaluation of backscatter response from
burned areas for X- and C- band SARs. The objectives were (1) to evaluate
and compare backscatter response in relation to burn severity for X- and Cband
data, and (2) to infer the prediction power of X- and C-band backscatter
for burn severity estimation.
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