ABSTRACT
This chapter offers selected research outcomes and contributes visual examples based on divergent specifications for synthetic aperture radar image acquisitions. Discussions and examples consider the incidence angle, look direction and orbital path, polarization mode, and spatial resolution. Visual effects of acquisition specifications are shown through outlined differences and similarities in the appearance of land use and land cover types. The observations concur, a large incidence angle and coarse spatial resolution assist the differentiation of open land and natural environment categories, which are intrinsically vast and form low spatial variability units. Conversely, near-range image positioning and fine spatial resolution options facilitate the interpretation of developed land cover and small dimension landscape features. Some of the look direction and incidence angle alternatives introduce spatial distortion and obstructions in mountainous, hilly terrain, and high-intensity-high-rise building developments. However, as part of image interpretation and for assessing shapes and patterns, these inconsistencies create information useful to the assessment of object height, topography, and surface roughness.
