Total aboveground biomass (TAGB) estimation using IFSAR: speckle noise effect on TAGB in tropical forest

Abstract

Total Aboveground Biomass (TAGB) estimation is critically important to enhance understanding of dynamics of carbon fluxes between atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystem. For humid tropical forest, it is a challenging task for researchers due to complex canopy structure and predominant cloud cover. Optical sensors are only able to sense canopy crown. In contrast, radar technology is able to sense sub-canopy structure of the forest with penetration ability through the cloud for precise biomass estimation with validation from field data including diameter at breast height (DBH) of trees. This study is concerned about estimation of TAGB through the utilization of Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR). Based on this study, it is found that the stand parameters such as DBH and backscattered on IFSAR image has high correlation, R2=0.6411. The most suitable model for TAGB estimation on IFSAR is Chave Model with R2=0.9139. This study analyzes the impact brought by speckle noises on IFSAR image. It is found that filtering process has improves TAGB estimation about +30% using several filtering schemes especially Gamma filter for 11×11 window size. Using field data obtained from a primary tropical forest at Gerik, Perak, TAGBestimation can be validated and the assessment has been carried out.