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Uses of SAR.
- Reconnaissance and Surveillance
- Much of the research work on the early development of SAR
was done by the military. They use the high resolution images
for mapping and to identify man-made objects.
- Environmental monitoring
- Resolutions of up to 10m per pixel can be achieved by a
spaceborne SAR. This easily suffices to monitor large scale
features like changes in land use, or in the oceans. As a
result, SAR has become an important tool for geophysical
monitoring, and this is currently the largest area of
applications.
These include:
- classification of land use
- agriculture monitoring for crop yield prediction and
fraud control
- monitoring of deforestation, soil erosion, or
desertification
- flood monitoring
- ice floe detection and tracking
- oil-slick detection
- Mapping
- SAR has been used to map small regions of the Earth (river
courses), entire countries, and even other planets. The
tropical climate of French Guiana makes opportunities for
optical imaging of the country rather rare. The first
satellite map of the entire country was made in 1992 using
ERS-1 images.
- Interferometry
- Interferometric SAR receives reflected signals at two
positions. This allows height information to be deduced and
3-D maps can be made.
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