Applications of Imaging Radar Data in Earth Science Investigations

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data provide unique information about the Earth's surface and biodiversity, including critical data for natural hazards and resource assessments. The ability to calculate the cross-section of a scatterer for any transmit and receive polarisation combination provides detailed information about vegetation for assessing changes in land cover, biomass and forest regrowth. Unique SAR interferometric measurements, predominantly large-scale surface change at fine resolution, are used to generate topographic data sets, monitor surface topographic change, and measure glacier ice velocity. The LightSAR mission, planned for launch in 2002 will be optimised for polarimetric and interferometric data acquisition in order to provide long-term observations of the Earth's changing conditions.