Relationship of Canopy Cover with TanDEM-X Features in a Tropical Peat Swamp Forest

Monitoring of tropical forests and peat swamp forests becomes increasingly important in order to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. SAR systems are suitable for that purpose due to their weather independence and sensitivity for changes in time series. The TanDEM-X mission delivers global datasets of a single-pass SAR interferometer, which provides more information in comparison to normal X-band SAR acquisitions. In particular the interferometric coherence can be regarded as useful information because it is dependent on tree height and canopy cover representing stand structure, which are important parameters for monitoring of forests