Recently, an anthropologenic activity causes an environmental issues in the global ecosystem. Especially, the wetland ecosystem, which includes rare vegetations and animals, is very sensitive to environmental and climate changes locally as well as globally. In addition, wetlands play an important role in the climate change as a source of methane, one of the greenhouse gasses. Therefore, it is very important to monitor wetland environment globally by remotely sensed data.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can acquire the data in almost all weather conditions and give us a possibility to monitor biomass related to vegetation structure. This paper describes some results applying SAR data to monitor wetland biomass. The RADARSAT data acquired in different incidence angles were compared with biomass data measured in Kushiro wetland. We found optimum incidence angle related to ground surface conditions in monitoring wetland biomass. A simple backscattering model for wetland vegetation was developed and applied to derive backscattering coefficients in different biomass and surface conditions. This model could explain scattering mechanisms which is related to wetland biomass.
