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The evaluation of biomass in tropical regions is an important input variable in the regional and global change models.
The use of JERS-1 and SIR-C datasets presents limits to the stratification of biomass, specially for those areas covered
by “mature tropical forest”. More detailed biomass intervals (> 100 ton/ha) cannot be defined due to the saturation of
the radar signal in such forest environments with structural complexity.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The methodological approach presented, based on JERS-1 and SIR-C data has been very useful to determine the land
cover changes due to human settlement that has occurred in Amazonia and more recently in the contact zone between
forest and savanna formations. It is an important challenge to use these images to evaluate and to stratify the vegetation
cover found in this region, in order to demonstrate the capacity of the sensor, and also to better understand the
techniques for the extraction of information. The final goal of all this effort is to improve monitoring of the biomass
dynamics by a multi-sensor approach, as well as the landscape changes, due to human action in this very large brazilian
tropical environment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project was conduced under the Bilateral Cooperation in Scientific Research and Technological Development
(WTZ) between Germany and Brazil. The authors acknowledge: CNPq (process 300677/91, 381246/97-3, 380597/99-3)
and logistic support by INCRA/Vilhena (RO).
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