2014 , Volume 19, № 3, p.5-13

Earth sensing by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) currently has made significant progress in addressing both scientific and applied problems in various sectors of the national economy. However, widespread deployment and use of radar techniques by departmental experts is hampered due to a lack of necessary skills for processing and interpretation of radar images. To solve this problem, we developed a technology for automated processing, formation and maintenance of the basic products for remote sensing that can be used by various agencies. The implementation was carried out in the framework of the Russian Federal Space Program for 2006-2015. Some aspects of automated design and verification technology for radar basic products (RBP) are presented in the article. Analysis of foreign and domestic publications showed that the most important way to determine the current state for land coverage and their monitoring relies on technologies, which use multi-temporal, multi-frequency and polari-metric composite images. In particular, classification of RBP primary images into seven classes was made based on the experience of using radar data. The basic steps needed to create a RBP are described and specialized software written on C++ programming language are implemented. The results of RBP investigation and verification based on the data from ALOS PALSAR, Radarsat-2, Cosmo-Skymed SAR (L-, C- and X-bands respectively) for three test forest territories in the Republic of Buryatia are presented. The implemented specialized software does not have such a rich palette of tools for georeferencing as in ENVI software or polarimetric processing as in PolSARPro software, but it enables automated processing of radar data with incomplete polarization which is useful for RBP consumers in streaming mode. Easy visual interpretation of RBP allows to make application area wider for the various ministries and departments, as well as for scientific and educational purposes.