Mapping Boreal forest biomass with imagery from polarimetric and semi-polarimetric SAR sensors

Data from ALOS/Palsar and TerraSAR-X were used to estimate forest biomass in Boreal forest zone in Finland. In the study site in Heinavesi (forest biomass between 0 and 255 tons/ha), the HH-polarised component of dual-polarised ALOS/Palsar produced biomass estimation accuracies (RMSE) between 35 and 42 tons/ha. In the Kuortane site (biomass 0…188 tons/ha) the RMSE varied between 25 and 28 tons/ha. Since only two winter-time scenes from TerraSAR-X were available, TerraSAR-X results were very preliminary. The phase of the HH-VV cross-coherence produced the highest biomass-correlations among the TerraSAR-X derived features. This produced a biomass estimation accuracy (RMSE) of 49 tons/ha in the Heinavesi study site.