Sensitivity Analysis of Multi-Temporal Sentinel-1 SAR Parameters to Crop Height and Canopy Coverage
Authors/Creators
- 1. Department of Geomatic Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Esenler, İstanbul 34220, Turkey; mustuner@yildiz.edu.tr
- 2. Department of Geomatic Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Esenler, İstanbul 34220, Turkey;fbalik@yildiz.edu.tr
- 3. Department of Geomatics Engineering, Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University, Zonguldak 67100, Turkey; sabdikan@beun.edu.tr
- 4. Department of Geology, Faculty of Mines, Istanbul Technical University, Maslak, Istanbul 34469, Turkey; ziyadin.cakir@itu.edu.tr
- 5. Department of Geomatic Engineering, Cukurova University, Ceyhan, Adana 01950, Turkey; aliihsan_sekertekin@hotmail.com
Description
The Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar technique has provided various opportunities
and challenges in agricultural activities mainly on crop management. The aim of this study is
to investigate the sensitivity of 10 parameters derived from multi-temporal Sentinel-1 Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SAR) data, to crop height and canopy coverage (CC) of maize, sunflower, and wheat.
The correlation coefficient values indicate a high correlation for maize during the early growing
stage. The coefficient determinations (R 2 ) of 0.82 and 0.81 indicate that there is a strong relationship
between the maize height and SAR parameters including VV + VH and VV, respectively. The maize
CC is well correlated with VV parameter (R 2 = 0.73), but it is observed that at the later growing stage
the correlation became weaker. This means that the sensitivity decreases with increasing vegetation
cover growth. Compared to maize, the sensitivity of SAR parameters to wheat variables is often
good at the early stage. However, the highest correlation with wheat height represented by Alpha
(α) decomposition parameter (R 2 = 0.67). The sunflower height has an insignificant correlation
with the majority of SAR parameters and only VH polarization shows low sensitivity (R 2 = 0.31).
The sunflower CC shows relatively higher correlation with VV polarization (R 2 = 0.46) at the early
stage while no considerable correlation is observed at the later stage. It is found that Sentinel-1 has a
high potential for estimation of crop height and CC of the maize as a broad-leaf crop. The same is not
true for sunflower as another broad-leaf crop.