Characterizing marsh wetlands in the Great Lakes Basin with C-band InSAR observations

There is limited research focusing on Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) applications in the Great Lakes coastal wetlands with large water level fluctuations. In this study, we investigated the potential of using C-band SAR data to characterize marsh wetland and monitor water level changes along the coast of the Great Lakes. InSAR analysis was conducted using Radarsat-2 and Sentinel-1 data collected at Long Point, Ontario, Canada over the period of 2016–2018. Observations indicated that both backscattering coefficients and coherence from tall plants (e.g. cattail/Phragmites), short plants (e.g. grass), and water varied with different sensor modes (incidence angles and polarizations) in response to changes in phenology, disturbance, and water level. InSAR phase changes were closely related to fluctuations in water level and flow direction. We evaluated InSAR time series observations using measurements from water level loggers based on correlation and root mean square error (RMSE). It was found that correlation between InSAR measurements and water level changes in the field varied depending on the site, type of wetland vegetation, incidence angle and polarization. Although results from some sensor modes provided good correlation at a few locations, the low fringe rate and RMSE between 9 and 28 cm indicated that InSAR observations of water level changes were generally underestimated.