Effects of vegetation structure on wetlands flood monitoring using SAR instruments

F. M. GRINGS; P. FERRAZZOLI; H. KARSZENBAUM; M. SALVIA; P. KANDUS; J. C. JACOBO-BERLLES; PABLO PERNA (1)

Valencia, España

Simposio; 2nd International Symposium of Recent Advances in Quantitative Remote Sensing; 2006

Wetlands are areas where the presence of water at or near the soil surface drives the natural system. Next to Buenos Aires, the Lower Delta of the Paraná River wetland is characterized by a complex hydrologic regime defined by the Paraná, Uruguay, and De La Plata rivers. The main objective of this work is to explore which are the instrument requirements, environmental conditions, and ecosystem characteristics that make possible the detection of water below the marshes in the lower Delta of the Paraná River. In order to give an answer, we have: 1) analyzed multipolarization and multiangular ENVISAT ASAR C band data acquired over the Paraná River Delta under different environmental conditions for two distinct marsh structures: junco and cortadera, 2) collected field data simultaneously with satellite acquisitions, 3) simulated the SAR-vegetation-water interactions using an improved version of EM model, 4) compared observations and model simulations, and 5) developed simple water level retrieval schemes for these two marshes. The results indicate that with the refined model we are able to represent with a good accuracy VV and HH and further work is needed for HV. The proposed retrieval method leads to an estimated water level with and RMS error of 22 cm.