Land consumption monitoring: an innovative method integrating SAR and optical data

In this paper, the use of synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) for the monitoring of land consumption is
analyzed. The paper presents an automatic procedure
that integrates SAR and optical data, which can be
effectively used to generate land consumption maps or
update existing maps. The main input of the procedure is
a series of SAR amplitude images acquired over a given
geographical area and observation period. The main
assumption of the procedure is that land consumption
is associated with an increase of the SAR amplitude
values. Such an increase is detected in the SAR amplitude
time series using an automatic Bayesian algorithm.
The results based on the SAR amplitude are then filtered
using an NDVI map derived from optical imagery. The
effectiveness of the proposed procedure is illustrated
using SAR data from the Sentinel-1 and TerraSAR-X
sensors, and optical data from the Sentinel-2 sensor.