Overview

In the field of agriculture, robust harvests and crop yields are challenged by the dynamic nature of soil and crop conditions that fluctuate throughout the growing season. Satellite imagery is an efficient method for mapping crop characteristics over large spatial areas and tracking temporal changes in soil and crop conditions.

Currently, SAR sensors such as RADARSAT-1 acquire imagery with a single transmit-receive polarization, providing a single radar image. Consequently, more than one acquisition date is usually required to estimate meaningful crop information.

Built into RADARSAT-2 are several powerful new features that benefit the agricultural sector. Among them are the new capabilities of dual-polarization and quad-polarization modes that enable the simultaneous acquisition of multiple polarizations on transmit and receive. In the quad-polarized mode for example, four different polarization channels are acquired, which is in contrast to the single channel for RADARSAT-1. Valuable crop information can be extracted from one RADARSAT-2 "image", thus eliminating the need for data acquisition over the course of several dates.