Land cover classification from SAR/IFSAR imagery

In the next few years, there will be a substantial increase in the number of commercial space-based and airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems and three-dimensional SAR systems (interferometric SAR: IFSAR). This will result in affordable, new types of data that can be used to complement other sensor systems, e.g., LandSat, SPOT, and in some cases, solve serious data collection deficiencies. The availability of this data has resulted in high interest in developing a commercial market for products derived from this data. This paper describes a methodology for developing such products and presents results from applying the methodology.