ABSTRACT
Multispectral optical satellite scanners, such as Landsat-TM, are commonly used for tundra habitat studies. However, periods of prolonged darkness or persistent cloud cover often preclude data acquisition on desired dates. Appearance of microwave satellite systems essentially increased potential monitoring environments by affording all-weather data collection. Compared with multispectral images, active microwave measurements have unique sensitivity to terrain surface, soil composition and moisture regime (Curlander and McDonough, 1991). Some aspects associated with classifying tundra vegetation using SAR data have been identified (Way et al., 1990). However, more studies are required to evaluate the diversity of methods for processing and analyzing radar data in the context of specific ecological applications and system characteristics.
