MONITORING FLOODED AREA FRACTION IN FLOODPLAINS OF PARANÁ BASIN USING PASSIVE AND ACTIVE MICROWAVE SYSTEMS

SALVIA M; GRINGS F.; PERNA P.; FERRAZZOLI P.; RAHMOUNE R.; BARBER M.; DOUNA V.; KARSZENBAUM H.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Simposio; 2010 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium; 2010

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Over the past two decades, orbital passive microwavesystems have proven to be sensitive to flood condition inlarge floodplains. This sensitivity is rooted in the welldifferentiated emission properties of calm water withrespect to non-flooded land of any kind. In this paper,AMSR-E observations of an herbaceous wetland area on theParaná River sub-basin were analyzed during the 2009-10timeframe when this region was affected by a strong andlong lasting flooding. Evident effects on the differencebetween vertically and horizontally polarized brightnesstemperatures (􀇻T) were observed at C-band. The fraction ofvegetated flooded area was estimated by applying animproved algorithm which uses ENVISAT ASAR data atspecific dates to calibrate AMSR-E temporal series. Also,using a theoretical emission model, the behavior of 􀇻Tflooded is discussed.