Vegetation Height from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, 2016-2018, Toolik, Alaska (US)

Vegetation height has been derived from Sentinel-1 satellite data acquired in VV mode with a resolution of 20 m. Vegetation height was estimated using an empirical model on imagery of the summer months July and August for the years 2015-2018. Clouds and water were masked using Sentinel-2 imagery. Areas with NDVI < 0.4 are excluded for vegetation height retrieval in order to account for effects related to C-band scattering from rough and bare surfaces. Areas with VV 0.4) are flagged as well as indicator for anomalous high values in vegetation related indices with at the same time low vegetation height. The remaining land area is assigned vegetation heights up to 160 cm. All heights > 160 cm are excluded and labelled as a separate class.

More information about image processing can be found in the product guide.