Mapping a sub-urban and agricultural landscape
by
polarimetric SAR images:
Applications to monitoring vineyards and soil moisture

Domenico Solimini (PI), Alessandro Burini, Cosimo Putignano,
Fabio Del Frate, Marco Del Greco, Giovanni Schiavon

SOAR 1488 Report

Tor Vergata EOLab, 2010

Abstract

The main object of study has been the monitoring of vineyards, with the general goal of estimating grape production from the excellent time series of RADARSAT-2 quad-pol acquisitions.

A subset of data has been also exploited to test an unsupervised pixel-based land cover classification scheme developed by the Tor Vergata Earth Observation Laboratory, based on the Self-Organizing Maps.

The last data take in December 2008 occurred immediately after an unusual long period of rain, which resulted in flooding of the north-east suburban area of Rome by the Aniene river. This offered the opportunity of evaluating the feasibility of mapping flooded areas by a single image in an unsupervised fashion and in near real time.

Finally, monitoring large buildings under construction has employed the multi-temporal data gathered within this project. This latter goal is being continued within the Sciences and Operational Research over Europe SOAR-EU Project 6795 entitled ``Monitoring of land cover and its changes in the south-east suburban Rome'', by fusing the images already acquired within the SOAR-1488 with those concurrently obtained within the SOAR-EU 6795. The obtained results and the ongoing activity are the subject of the SOAR-EU 6795 report.

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Index Terms - RADARSAT-2. SAR. Backscattering. Polarimetry. Agriculture. Flooding