Resumo

GARCIA, César Edwin; SANTOS, João Roberto dos; MURA, José Claudio  e  KUX, Hermann Johann Henrich. Analysis of the potential use from TerraSAR-X images for thematic mapping in SW Brazilian Amazon region. Acta Amaz. [online]. 2012, vol.42, n.2, pp. 205-214. ISSN 0044-5967.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0044-59672012000200004.

The objective of this work was to analyze the potential use of SAR polarimetric images from the TerraSAR-X sensor system, at StripMap mode, to map land use and land cover in SW Brazilian Amazon. Amplitude images at polarizations A_HH, A_VV, A_<HH.VV*>, derived from the co-variance matrix, as well as the entropy A_Entropia, derived from the decomposition of targets by eigenvalues, are parts of the datasets investigated individually or in combined form. Two classifiers were used: the first is based on statistical functions of maximum likelihood (MAXVER), and the second is the contextual method (Context). The thematic results from these classifications were evaluated by a confusion matrix and by the Kappa index. Summarizing we can state that the components A_<HH.VV*> and A_Entropia, gave a significant contribution to the image classification procedure, considering specially the Context method, whose performance reached 78% of Global Accuracy and a Kappa index of 0.70.

Palavras-chave : Forest mapping; Radar; Polarimetric classification; Amazon.