Identification of Structural Changes Caused by Natural Disasters in Agriculture by Synergistic Use of Optical and Radar Data

The Remote Sensing Centre (RSC) of the Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (FÖMI) has provided many services in the past 30 years to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Ministry of Environment and Water (MEW). FÖMI also accumulated operational experiences in the applications of remote sensing. The unique methodology of the operational Crop Monitoring and Production Forecast Programme (CROPMON, 1997 2003) provided an excellent methodology basis for further applications development. One of the operationally project was the Western Corn Rootworm (WCR) damage identification, which demonstrated the potential in the integrated assessment of optical and radar (ALOS PALSAR) satellite images to assess and identify the disorder and structural changes caused by WCR larvae. Using polarimetric radar technique increased the accuracy significantly. Based on the achieved objectives of that project there is potential in the integrated analysis of optical and radar images to assess and identify other disorders and structural changes on agricultural fields. Crop damages caused by different type of natural disasters (wild animal, hail storm) can cause also structural changes on crop fields. We suppose that we can separate the damaged crop fields from the control fields by radar polarimetry. The first results in case of hail damage area presented in this paper.