Polarimetric SAR for the monitoring of agricultural crops

The monitoring of agricultural crops is a matter of great importance. Remote sensing has been unanimously recognized as one of the most important techniques for agricultural crops monitoring. Within the framework of active remote sensing, the capabilities of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to provide fine spatial resolution and a wide area coverage, both in day and night time and almost under all weather conditions, make it a key tool for agricultural applications, including the monitoring and the estimation of phenological stages of crops. The monitoring of crop phenology is fundamental for the planning and the triggering of cultivation practices, since they require timely information about the crop conditions along the cultivation cycle. Due to the sensitivity of polarization of microwaves to crop structure and dielectric properties of the canopy, which in turn depend on the crop type, retrieval of phenology of agricultural crops by means of polarimetric SAR measurements is a promising application of this technology, especially after the launch of a number of polarimetric satellite sensors. In this thesis C-band polarimetric SAR measurements are used to estimate pheno- logical stages of agricultural crops. The behavior of polarimetric SAR observables at different growth stages is analyzed and then estimation procedures, aimed at the retrieval of such stages, are defined. The second topic on which this thesis is focused on is the land cover types discrimi- nation by means of X-band multi-polarization SAR data.