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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Daily Overview

Session

Biomass First Results II
Location: Purple Hall
Session Chair: Marta Bottani, CESBIO
Session Chair: Muriel Pinheiro, European Space Agency (ESA)

Presentation 5

3:30pm - 3:50pm

First Tomographic Results with BIOMASS

Francesco Salvaterra², Francesco Banda¹, Naomi Petrushevsky², Stefano Tebaldini²

1: aresys, Italy; 2: Politecnico di Milano, Italy

BIOMASS [1] is ESA’s seventh Earth Explorer, successfully launched on April 29, 2025. The first P-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in space offers unprecedented scientific opportunities, thanks to the long wavelength, full polarimetric capabilities and orbits specifically designed for repeat pass interferometry (InSAR) and tomography (TomoSAR). Its primary objective is mapping forest biomass and height and their changes over time. Secondary objectives are targeted at studying ionosphere, deserts and ice, as well as retrieving Digital Terrain Model (DTM) under vegetation [1].

Activities from launch to date have been dedicated mainly to In-Orbit Commissioning (IOC) phase. Main focus has been on instrument and system calibration, though several other activities have been carried out in the framework of ongoing projects (e.g., BIOTOMEX). In the latter two phases of IOC (COM4/5) data have been acquired in tomographic configuration, i.e., seven acquisitions with baseline spacing corresponding to 15% of the critical baseline, with a theoretical TomoSAR vertical resolution of about 23 m at the Equator, offering a preliminary opportunity to assess InSAR and TomoSAR performance. An additional opportunity is offered by COM2, with drifting orbits designed to characterize antenna pattern over BIOMASS transponder, which allow TomoSAR at higher latitudes with performance comparable to that of COM 4/5 at the Equator. After IOC the mission transitions to TOM phase, with full tomographic coverage in three different swaths.

In this contribution we present first BIOMASS TomoSAR results obtained so far, with preliminary assessment on IOC acquisitions both at equatorial and higher latitudes.

References

[1] Quegan, Shaun, et al. "The European Space Agency BIOMASS mission: Measuring Forest above-ground biomass from space." Remote Sensing of Environment (2019)