Crop polarisation behavior derived from Multi-Temporal adeos-polder data

This paper reports a study on multi-temporal polarized response of wheat crop from spaceborne ADEOS-POLDER sensor over a homogeneous wheat region of Punjab, India. Both the polarized as well as total reflectance of wheat were observed at different scattering angles for two spectral bands i.e. 670 nm and 865 nm during crop growth from November to April in rabi 1996-97 season. Results show that sun-target-viewing geometry plays an important role in polarization property. The top of atmosphere (TOA) polarized reflectance is found to decrease exponentially with increasing scattering angle. Polarized reflectance of crop was found to be an order of magnitude smaller in comparison to the total reflectance. An attempt was also made to model the observed polarized behavior over an agricultural area using a theoretical simplified crop reflectance model and accounting for atmospheric molecular (Rayleigh) contribution in the single scattering approximation. It was found that there was a decrease in the polarized reflectance at the grain filling (heading) stage of wheat crop. This is in accordance with ground- based observations and can be due to the reduction in the specular component of the reflected light during post-heading stage of the crop.