dos Santos, Joao Roberto
2 AREA UNDER STUDY
The area under study is located at the municipality of
Comodoro (geographical coordinates W 59° 37’ - 60° 11°
and S 13° 02° — S 13° 48’), at the State border Mato
Grosso/Rondonia, where an intermingling of species from
both formations occurs (Figure 1).
The climate of this region, according to Kóppen, is of Aw
type, presenting a tropical rain season with a well-defined
dry season, and an average annual rainfall of 1,700 mm.
Figure 1. Section of the area under study: JERS-1
and SIR-C scenes
3 DATA ACQUISITION AND METHODS
The JERS-1 image of path/row 410/323 of May 22™ *96 was obtained in the frame of NASDA's Global Rain Forest
Monitoring Project (GRFM), through an agreement with INPE, to perform this study. The references of the digital SIR-
C image acquired by DLR are: DT 14.71, GMT at image center 07:52:59.8 (1994/274). A TM-Landsat scene at bands 3
(red), 4 (near infrared) and 5 (middle infrared), referring to path/row 229/69 from July 9" 97, in digital format, was
also used as a complementary source of information related to the landscape characterization and to support the
extraction of the backscattering values on the selected sampling areas at both radar images. Both JERS-1 and SIR-C
scenes were processed using respectively the ENVI and ERDAS package. Figure 2 shows the flow diagram of the
methodology used, whose detailed description can be found in Xaud (1998), Santos et al. (1998) and Krämer (1999).
Figure 2. Methodological steps of JERS-1 and SIR-C data processing.
In order to understand the physiognomic-structural characteristics of vegetation cover, two procedures of data collection
were used during the field survey. In those areas covered by savanna, the biomass estimation was made by cutting and
weighting the woody and foliar material of different strata, considering size plots of 200 or 500 m? each (11 samples)
378 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B7. Amsterdam 2000.
