| Changes in vegetation can affect our health, the environment and the economy. Understanding this, twenty years ago scientists began to use satellite remote sensors to monitor major fluctuations in vegetation and understand how it affects the environment. Previous work was done using passive sensors and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), with 1 km 2 satellite resolution. In this research the emphasis has been to calculate vegetation health using active sensors such as radar, which dominates a very fine resolution. Wideband radar, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), with range from 300MHz to 3GHz with center frequency of 1.5GHz has been implemented obtaining multiple responses for vegetation at various wavelengths. Materials Characteristics in Fourier Domain (MCFD) was developed and its power at multiple wavelengths of the wide-band radar has shown to be a good indicator of vegetation health. The GPR and NDVI values compared favorably with a correlation of -0.97. |
