Estimation of Snow Depth in Kushiro Area Using L-Band SAR Imagery

抄録

　In this paper, snow depth in Kushiro area, the largest wetland in Japan, was estimated using L-Band SAR imagery. The SAR imagery can be used to observe land condition regardless of the weather condition. The accuracy of SAR however, is affected by topography or surface roughness. To remove the effects of topography or surface roughness, we applied the principal component analysis (PCA) to the SAR imagery. As a result, it was found that the proposed method could effectively estimate snow depth using SAR imagery because one principal component image of SAR calculated by PCA include the snow depth information without the effects of topography or surface roughness.