A New Approach To Use Dual-Polarized Sar Imagery For The Detection Of Bivalve Beds On Exposed Intertidal Flats

The most common polarimetric decompositions can only be computed for fully polarimetric data at the cost of reduced spatial resolution and areal coverage. In this paper, we analyze the potential of dual-pol SAR imagery for the monitoring of bivalve beds on intertidal flats. The normalized Kennaugh elements, which can be calculated from dual-pol data of any wavelength, are applied to deduce polarimetric information from HH and VV polarized TerraSAR-X imagery. The real (K3) and imaginary (K7) parts of the inter-channel correlations are demonstrated to be indicators for bivalve (oyster and mussel) beds in a test site in the German Wadden Sea. Our results show that K3 and K7 can be used to detect bivalve beds with high accuracy.