Spatiotemporal variations of wetland backscatter: The role of water depth and vegetation characteristics in Sentinel-1 dual-polarization SAR observations

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) backscatter observations are sensitive to hydrologic conditions and vegetation characteristics of land cover. This study conducted a high spatial-resolution investigation (30-m) on the response of dual-polarization C-band (5.6 cm wavelength) SAR backscatter coefficients (σ°) to temporal changes of surface water depth (dw) and spatial variations of vegetation characteristics in the south Florida Everglades wetlands. We investigated (1) linear relationships between σ° and dw values, and (2) the effects of vegetation density and morphology on σ°-dw relationships. We developed a new method to classify pixels with significant linear relationships of multi-temporal σ° and dw (R2 > 0.5 and p-value