Polarization, land use type and intraurban location as variables in SAR mapping accuracy

Dual-polarized X-band airborne synthetic aperture radar imagery of Los Angeles, California is employed to examine the relationship among urban land use category identification, category location within an urban area, and radar polarization. Results indicate that HV polarized imagery may be preferred for urban land use mapping as the signal response is less sensitive to target orientation and surface scatter. That is, there was more category related variation in tone and texture. For both polarizations there were significant differences in identification accuracy among land use classes and the ability to identify a single land use type varied across the study area, but not equally. A major problem relative to developing applications was the inability to distinguish Commercial-Services and Industrial activity from other categories.