THE EFFECTS OF COHERENCE CALCULATION ON FOREST HEIGHT ESTIMATION USING SINC MODEL

Abstract. In this paper, the effects of coherence on forest height estimation by SINC model based on Tandem-X InSAR data were explored. First, different coherence calculation methods and different window sizes were used to obtain interferometric coherence images. Then, the forest heights were obtained based on SINC model. Finally, the estimated forest heights were validated against reference data from airborne LIDAR CHM (Canopy height model, CHM). The results showed that the coherence calculation algorithm affect the forest height inversion results with SINC model. The algorithm using only phase information for coherence calculation show better performance than the other one using both magnitude and phase information. Meanwhile, window size selecting for coherence calculation also affect the forest height estimation results. In this study, window size with 9 × 9 shows best agreement with the forest height extracted from LiDAR CHM. The R2 and RMSE are 0.656 and 3.54 m, respectively.