BioSAR Airborne Biomass Sensing System
This CRADA was developed to enable ORNL to assist American Electronics, Inc. test a new technology--BioSAR. BioSAR is a an airborne, low frequency (80-120 MHz {approx} FM radio frequencies) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology which was designed and built for NASA by ZAI-Amelex under Patrick Johnson's direction. At these frequencies, leaves and small branches are nearly transparent and the majority of the energy reflected from the forest and returned to the radar is from the tree trunks. By measuring the magnitude of the back scatter, the volume of the tree trunk and therefore the biomass of the trunks can be inferred. The instrument was successfully tested on tropical rain forests in Panama. Patrick Johnson, with American Electronics, Inc received a Phase II SBIR grant from DOE Office of Climate Change to further test and refine the instrument. Mr Johnson sought ORNL expertise in measuring forest biomass in order for him to further validate his instrument. ORNL provided ground truth measurements of forest biomass at three locations--the Oak Ridge Reservation, Weyerhaeuser Co. commercial pine plantations in North Carolina, and American Energy and Power (AEP) Co. hardwood forests in southern Ohio, and facilitated flights over these forests. After Mr. Johnson processed the signal data from BioSAR instrument, the processed data were given to ORNL and we attempted to derive empirical relationships between the radar signals and the ground truth forest biomass measurements using standard statistical techniques. We were unsuccessful in deriving such relationships. Shortly before the CRADA ended, Mr Johnson discovered that FM signal from local radio station broadcasts had interfered with the back scatter measurements such that the bulk of the signal received by the BioSAR instrument was not backscatter from the radar but rather was local radio station signals.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Solar Thermal, Biomass Power, and Hydrogen Technologies (EE-13)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-22725
- OSTI ID:
- 940302
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL02-0660; TRN: US200824%%249
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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