HD-10: Vegetation Biomass Estimate at Both Local and Global Scale with Microwave Sensors

Simonetta Paloscia and Emaniele Santi

Sunday, July 26
13:30 - 17:30

Abstract:

The tutorial will deal with the monitoring and the estimate of vegetation biomass from microwave satellite sensors. Temporal evolution of vegetation cover and its changes, both in term of crop types and total biomass, is very important for climatic issues, water and agricultural crop management, and forecast and management of natural disaster.

Microwave sensors, thanks to the high sensitivity to water content of observed bodies, are able to describe the water conditions of vegetation cover and to estimate its biomass, provided suitable observation frequencies are selected. Some current and future satellite missions (such as AMSR2, SMOS, SMAP, Sentinel, BIOMASS, etc.) are devoted to this goal. According to the sensor type (i.e. SAR or radiometers), the achieved ground resolution ranges from a few meters to several kilometers and the objective of the monitoring is consequently different. Microwave radiometers, due to the coarse ground resolution, observe the earth surface on a global scale, which is more suitable for global changes and climatic applications; whereas, SAR sensors, due to the very high ground resolution, are able to monitor specific areas with great detail and are therefore more suitable for the observation of environmental risks and disasters (e.g. flooding, identification of snow cover areas, avalanches, landslides, and so on). By using adequate models, the microwave signal can be accurately simulated as a function of several geophysical parameters. Moreover, the use of innovative inversion algorithms allows a precise estimate of these parameters and multi-temporal maps can be generated.

Biography:

SIMONETTA PALOSCIA: since 1984 she is with the National Research Council (C.N.R.), where she worked in agrometeorology and microwave remote sensing studies concerning natural surfaces. Her research currently concerns the study of microwave emission and scattering of soil (bare and snow-covered) and vegetation. Since 2004 she is scientific responsible of the Microwave Remote Sensing group at IFAC, and the research line “Microwave Remote Sensing of natural surfaces”, in the EO Project of CNR.
She was PI and Co-I of many national and international projects (ASI, EC, ESA, JAXA). Since 1996 she is Principal Investigators in JAXA Science Team of AQUA/AMSR-E and GCOM/AMSR-2 for algorithms development of soil moisture and vegetation biomass retrieval. She is member of the SMAP JPL/NASA Science Team. She was member of organizing and steering committees of international meetings (Specialist Meeting on Microwave Radiometry and IGARSS). She is member of the permanent Steering Committee of MicroRad Meeting and she was General Co-chair of the MicroRad 1999 and 2008 and URSI-F 2010 meetings organized in Florence. She is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS, and European Journal of Remote Sensing. She is IEEE Fellow since 2012, and Fellow of Electromagnetics Academy of Cambridge (MA, USA).
She is author and co-author of more than 70 works published on international journals and books, of more than 120 papers published on proceedings of international meetings.

EMANUELE SANTI: he received his degree in Electronic Engineering in 1997, from the University of Florence, and his PhD in Earth’s Remote Sensing Techniques from the University of Basilicata in 2005. Since 1998 he works with the Microwave Remote Sensing Group at Institute of Applied Physics of the National Research Council (IFAC–CNR, former IROE) and in 2009 he got a permanent staff position. His research deals with the study of microwave emission and scattering from sea and land surfaces and their relationships with snow, soil, and vegetation parameters, using data from passive and active microwave sensors operating from ground based platforms, aircraft and satellites. Main topic of his research activity is the development and validation of models and inversion algorithms for estimating the geophysical parameter of soil, sea, snow and vegetation (i.e soil moisture and roughness, vegetation biomass, liquid water content, snow water equivalent and wind speed over sea).
From the beginning of his research activity, he was and is involved in many international programs of ESA, ASI and other governmental agencies, with the role of CO-investigator or WP leader. He also participated to several experimental campaigns for monitoring snow, soil, vegetation and sea parameters. He is referee of several international journals as the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, the International Journal of Remote Sensing, the Remote Sensing of Environment, the MDPI Remote Sensing, the Advances in Space Research, the ELSEVIER Computers & Geosciences. He is also referee of the Italian Remote Sensing journal and of the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). He is member of the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and of the “Centro di Telerilevamento a Microonde (Microwave Remote Sensing Center)”. He is author and co-author of 18 works published on international journals and books, more than 60 papers published on proceedings of international conferences, 11 papers published on national journals. He is in the programme committee of the SPIE Europe Remote Sensing conference and was session chairman of the SPIE Europe Remote Sensing conferences held in Toulouse in 2010 and in Prague 2011. He also was session chairman at the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2005 (IGARSS'05) held in Seoul (South Korea) and at the URSI Microwave Signatures conference 2010, held in Florence.