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- Sensitive to vertical structures on the Earth's surface
- Provides good contrast among vegetation types that have different vertical canopy structures
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- Penetrates canopy more than vertically-polarized microwaves
- Provides more information about the underlying soil condition
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- Sensitive to crop structure within the total canopy volume
- Information acquired is complementary to HH and VV images
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- Studies show considerable improvement in crop discrimination using two polarizations (e.g. from 45% accuracy using one band to 78% using two)
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- Multi-polarized data are useful for deriving crop condition information
- Optimal polarization for mapping crop condition varies depending on crop growth stage and crop type
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- Useful for within field zonal mapping of crop condition
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- High-resolution (3m) data is expected to improve crop yield mapping
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- Quad-Pol data is expected to improve crop yield mapping due to the increased sensitivity to crop structure
- Optimal crop information is obtained when SAR data is combined with other data sources
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- Useful for differentiating vegetative surfaces from bare surfaces
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