Estimating flow resistance of wetlands using SAR images and interaction models

Abstract

The inability to monitor wetland drag coefficients at a regional scale is rooted in the difficulty to determine vegetation structure from remote sensing data. Based on the fact that the backscattering coefficient is sensitive to marsh vegetation structure, this paper presents a methodology to estimate the drag coefficient from a combination of SAR images, interaction models and ancillary data. We use as test case a severe fire event occurred in the Paraná River Delta (Argentina) at the beginning of 2008, when 10% of the herbaceous vegetation was burned up. A map of the reduction of the wetland drag coefficient is presented.