Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar data for Crop Cover Classification

Abstract. The interest in crop inventory through the use of microwave sensors is on the rise owing to need for accurate crop forecast and the availability of multi polarization data. Till recently, the temporal amplitude data has been used for crop discrimination as well as acreage estimation. With the availability of dual and quadpol data, the differential response of crop geometry at various crop growth stages to various polarizations is being exploited for discrimination and classification of crops. An attempt has been made in the current study with RISAT1 and Radarsat2 C-band single, dual, fully and hybrid polarimetric data for crop inventory. The single date hybrid polarimetric data gave comparable results to the three date single polarization data as well as with the single date fully polarimetric data for crops like rice and cotton.