Multi-temporal, multi-frequency, and multi-polarization coherence and SAR backscatter analysis of wetlands

Despite recent research into the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique for wetland mapping worldwide, its capability has not yet been thoroughly investigated for Canadian wetland ecosystems. Accordingly, this study statistically analysed interferometric coherence and SAR backscatter variation in a study area located on the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, consisting of various wetland classes, including bog, fen, marsh, swamp, and shallow-water. Specifically, multi-temporal L-band ALOS PALSAR-1, C-band RADARSAT-2, and X-band TerraSAR-X data were used to investigate the effect of SAR frequency and polarization, as well as temporal baselines on the coherence degree in the various wetland classes. SAR backscatter and coherence maps were also used as input features into an object-based Random Forest classification scheme to examine the contribution of these features to the overall classification accuracy. Our findings suggested that the temporal baseline was the most influential factor for coherence maintenance in herbaceous wetlands, especially for shorter wavelengths. In general, coherence was the highest in L-band and intermediate/low for both X- and C-band, depending on the wetland classes and temporal baseline. The Wilcoxon rank sum test at the 5% significance level found significant difference (P-value < 0.05) between the mean values of HH/HV coherence at the peak of growing season. The test also suggested that L-band intensity and X-band coherence observations were advantageous to discriminate complex wetland classes. Notably, an overall classification accuracy of 74.33% was attained for land cover classification by synergistic use of both SAR backscatter and interferometric coherence. Thus, the results of this study confirmed the potential of incorporating SAR and InSAR features for mapping Canadian wetlands and those elsewhere in the world with similar ecological characteristics.