Spatiotemporal variations of wetland backscatter: The role of water depth and vegetation characteristics in Sentinel-1 dual-polarization SAR observations

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) backscatter observations are sensitive to hydrologic conditions and vegetation characteristics of land cover. This study conducted a high spatial-resolution investigation (30-m) on the response dual-polarization C-band (5.6 cm wavelength) SAR coefficients (?°) temporal changes surface water depth (dw) spatial variations in south Florida Everglades wetlands. We investigated (1) linear relationships between ?° dw values, (2) effects density morphology ?°-dw relationships. developed new method classify pixels with significant multi-temporal (R2 > 0.5 p-value <0.04), which were termed “Reliable Scatterer” (RS). RS included positive, negative, combination both positive negative (corresponding RS+, RS?, RS±, respectively). Our analysis revealed spatially varying densities morphologies had impact types, where we found RS+ type for woody vegetation, RS± mix medium- high-density herbaceous using VV (C-VV) data, RS? sparse C-VH data. Overall, our indicates that is water-depth some this sensitivity has potential serve as reliable indicator monitoring wetland environments.