Orbital effects on ERS-1 SAR temporal backscatter profiles of agricultural crops

Multi-temporal radar backscatter characteristics of crops and their underlying soils were analysed for an agricultural area in south-western Ontario, Canada using nine dates of ERS-1 SAR imagery acquired during the 1993 growing season. From the calibrated data, SAR temporal backscatter profiles were generated for each crop type. The results indicate that small changes in incidence-angle can have strong impacts on radar backscatter. Thus, attention must be given to local incidence-angle effects when using ERS-1 SAR data, especially when comparing backscatter coefficients of the same area from different scenes or different areas within the same scene.