Accounting for surface roughness scattering in the characterization of forest litter with ground-penetrating radar

Forest litter; Frequency dependence; Ground-penetrating radar (GPR); Roughness; Scattering; Forestry; Geological surveys; Geophysical prospecting; Permittivity; Remote sensing; Surface roughness; Ground Penetrating Radar; Ground penetrating radar (GPR); Relative dielectric permittivity; Surface roughness model; Surface roughness scattering; Ultrawideband ground penetrating radars; Ground penetrating radar systems

Abstract :

[en] Accurate characterization of forest litter is of high interest for land surface modeling and for interpreting remote sensing observations over forested areas. Due to the large spatial heterogeneity of forest litter, scattering from litter layers has to be considered when sensed using microwave techniques. Here, we apply a full-waveform radar model combined with a surface roughness model to ultrawideband ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data acquired above forest litter during controlled and in situ experiments. For both experiments, the proposed modeling approach successfully described the radar data, with improvements compared to a previous study in which roughness was not directly accounted for. Inversion of the GPR data also provided reliable estimates of the relative dielectric permittivity of the recently fallen litter (OL layer) and of the fragmented litter in partial decomposition (OF layer) with, respectively, averaged values of 1.35 and 3.8 for the controlled experiment and of 3.9 and 7.5 for the in situ experiment. These results show the promising potentialities of GPR for efficient and non-invasive characterization of forest organic layers. © 2019 by the authors.

Disciplines :

Environmental sciences & ecology
Phytobiology (plant sciences, forestry, mycology...)

Author, co-author :

André, F. ^✱; Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348, Belgium

Jonard, François ^✱; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Systèmes d'information géographiques

Jonard, M.; Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348, Belgium

Vereecken, H.; Agrosphere (IBG-3), Institute of Bio- and Geosciences, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, 52425, Germany

Lambot, S.; Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348, Belgium

^✱ These authors have contributed equally to this work.

Language :

English

Title :

Accounting for surface roughness scattering in the characterization of forest litter with ground-penetrating radar

Publication date :

2019

Journal title :

Remote Sensing

eISSN :

2072-4292

Publisher :

MDPI AG

Volume :

Issue :

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Available on ORBi :

since 21 September 2021

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