Characterizing Lodging Damage in Wheat and Canola Using Radarsat-2 Polarimetric SAR Data

Crops are vulnerable to strong winds, and the resulting lodging damage can have a great effect on the yield. We characterize lodged wheat and canola using polarimetric features derived from a series of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar data. Reflection asymmetry and reduced differential extinction are observed for lodged wheat, but not for canola, whose canopy structure has a high degree of randomness. The circular-pol correlation coefficient is explored as an indicator for the lodging damage of wheat. The results demonstrate that the capability of PolSAR in lodging damage monitoring is related to the canopy structure of crops.