| Title | Capabilities of RADARSAT Data for Land Use / Land Cover Analysis in SW Amazonia (Test Site Acre, Brazil) |
| |
| Author | Kux, H J H; Roberto dos Santos, J; Lacruz, M S; Ahern, F; Pietsch, R W |
| Source | International Symposium, Geomatics in the Era of RADARSAT (GER'97), Ottawa, Canada, May 25-30; 1997 p. 11 |
| Year | 1997 |
| Alt Series | Earth Sciences Sector, Contribution Series 20042225 |
| Document | book |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | paper |
| Abstract | The area under study, located in SW Amazonia, Acre State, Brazil, has been studied in the last few years, using both optical (TM-Landsat) and microwave (airborne C-band SAR, ERS-1, SIR-C) remote sensing
data. Recently data from RADARSAT in both Standard and Fine mode beams were acquired. The objective of this study is to show the capabilities of RADARSAT and merged RADARSAT/Landsat TM images for land use / land cover discrimination in SW Amazonia.
The concept of the study is to analyze the feasibility for systematic mapping of similar land use / land cover features in the tropical rainforest areas. Two distinct periods of the tropical hydrological cycle, i.e. at the end of both the rainy
(April/May) and at the dry season (September/October) were investigated. The main features discriminated were: phenological conditions of pasture, recent forest burning, and changes in regrowth patterns. The separation of small (50-100 ha) and large
(200 to several 1000 ha) clearings is also feasible. Furthermore, a stratification of primary forest and regrowth is also in progress. The RADARSAT products used were pre-processed at CCRS. It consisted of scaling the data from 16 to 8 bit real
integers, antenna pattern correction, attenuation of speckle and linearly contrast stretch. The RADARSAT data was then registered to Landsat TM Bands 3, 4 and 5 with IHS/RGB transforms, to integrate the data. This study is supported by both color
aerial photographs (scale 1:20,000) and physiognomic-structural profiles of the vegetation types. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 219027 |
|
|