Unlocking Forest Vital Signs: Harnessing Microwave Remote Sensing with a Unified BERT Radiative Transfer Theory

The Atlanta chapters of AES/GRS, IM/EMC, and AP/MTT are pleased to host Dr. Mehmet Kurum on Wednesday, December 4. The talk will be held in Midtown Atlanta, streamed to Cobb County, and available virtually via Webex. Speaker: Dr. Mehmet Kurum, Associate Professor at the University of Georgia Title: Unlocking Forest Vital Signs: Harnessing Microwave Remote Sensing with a Unified BERT Radiative Transfer Theory Abstract: Variations in forest vegetation water content (VWC) indicate forest health and resilience to stresses like temperature changes, water availability, and disturbances. Vegetation optical depth (VOD), derived from microwave retrievals, is proportional to forest VWC, and can act as a health monitor for ecosystems. Improved temporal and spatial quantification of VWC variations is expected to aid in the improved evaluation of how forests respond to drought, including tree mortality and wildfire risk. However, current spaceborne VOD products struggle with the lack of physical relationships between geophysical properties and radiative transfer characteristics, especially given the temporal variability and spatial heterogeneity. VOD estimates are influenced by various factors that need to be corrected and taken into account, including structure information, vegetation sap, and water film layers in addition to microwave parameters like polarization and frequency. In this talk, I provide insights into the parameterization of retrieval algorithms and deepen the understanding of VOD across a broad spectrum of microwave measurements, such as Backscatter, Emissivity, Reflectivity, and Transmissivity (collectively referred to as BERT). We demonstrate integrating Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) measurements within a novel unified radiative transfer (RT) framework to simulate forest BERT (ForBERT) observations. Such a unified model will aid in analyzing and interpreting VOD data from various NASA missions like SMAP, CYGNSS, AMSR-2, and future NISAR, as well as ESA missions such as SMOS, Sentinel-1, and ASCAT. We will explore needs in scattering models with varying degrees of assumption on the statistical homogeneity, the shape of scatterers, wave illumination, and complex heterogeneous realistic vegetated terrains. In other words, we seek “radio realistic” scene generation by exercising the trade-off between “photo” (architecture) realism and accuracy needs. Without a clear understanding of the impact of the complex features of a “radio realistic” canopy on the scattered signals, retrieval algorithms cannot make the best use of retrieved VOD measurements or can even cause misinterpretation of the results. Speaker(s): Dr. Mehmet Kurum Agenda: 11:30 – noon : Lunch Noon – 1:00 : Technical Talk Two physical locations will offer lunch at 11:30 AM. Please indicate in the RSVP menu options which site you will attend, or if you will attend virtually. Midtown Atlanta (In-Person): Georgia Tech EBB Krone Building, Room 4029 950 Atlantic Dr NW Suite 1 Atlanta, GA 30332 Cobb County (Virtual): GTRI Building 11, Rm 1226 2001 Dixie Avenue SE Smyrna, Georgia 30080 Room: 4029, Bldg: EBB Krone, 950 Atlantic Dr NW, Atlanta, Georgia, United States, 30332, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/446663