Conference Agenda
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Daily Overview |
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Biomass Campaigns Location: Purple Hall Session Chair: Nuno Carvalhais, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Session Chair: Ludovic Villard, CESBIO / CNRS | |
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2:10pm - 2:30pm
Calibration and Validation of ESA’s Biomass and NASA’s NISAR Missions Using UAVSAR and Lidar Data Sets in Africa, and Central and South America Jet propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States of America The UAVSAR AfriSAR campaigns of 2016 and 2024 represent major milestones in the joint NASA–ESA–DLR effort to advance calibration and validation (Cal/Val) of the NISAR and BIOMASS missions, while laying the foundation for future radar and lidar missions such as NASA’s Surface Topography and Vegetation (STV). These international collaborations demonstrate how coordinated airborne radar and lidar acquisitions can strengthen cross-agency scientific and technical cooperation, fostering new applications of 3D remote sensing for ecosystem, geomorphological , and hydrological research. The 2016 AfriSAR campaign in Gabon established a benchmark by acquiring extensive multi-baseline PolInSAR and TomoSAR datasets, complemented by airborne and spaceborne lidar. These data enabled groundbreaking studies—over 100 peer-reviewed publications—on tropical forest structure, biomass, and sub-canopy topography. The 2024 AfriSAR-2 campaign, extending coverage across Ghana, Cameroon, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, builds on this success to refine TomoSAR acquisitions and improving retrieval algorithms for L-band (NISAR) and P-band (BIOMASS) measurements across a wider diversity of landscapes. These datasets directly support the ESA BIOMASS Cal/Val project PP0104629. To meet the growing analytical complexity of these campaigns, new tools such as Kapok (for multi-baseline PolInSAR and TomoSAR analysis) and CAPON (for adaptive tomographic focusing) are being developed to enhance vertical resolution and structural accuracy. These advances help bridge the algorithmic maturity gap between radar and lidar approaches and contribute directly to the scientific and technological objectives of STV, envisioned as a unified mission for global mapping of surface topography and vegetation structure. Looking ahead, the upcoming TropiSAR 2026 campaign in Peru and Colombia will expand these Cal/Val activities to the Amazon and Chocó-Darien-central America region, providing cross-continental datasets for BIOMASS, NISAR and STV. This effort reinforces the growing NASA–ESA collaboration in algorithm development, data sharing, and applied science. The presentation will survey the datasets acquired during these campaigns, assess current processing and algorithmic capabilities, and outline future development needs—particularly in TomoSAR processing, canopy-ground separation, and hydrologic coupling—to fully realize the potential of radar missions for global forest and water resource monitoring. | |
