VHF Radar Sensor for Measurement of Terrestrial Vegetative Biomass  

American Electronics, Inc. 

Vienna, Va 
 

Innovative airborne radar system for the measurement of biomass in dense tropical forests

• Product developed is BioSAR™
• A pulse-coherent radar system capable of collecting data at low frequencies in a downward-looking mode
• The Very High Frequency (VHF) radar signal penetrates the smaller forest canopy components, allowing a scattering measurement directly related to the biometry of the tree boles and large branches

• Department of Defense Legacy program has sponsored follow-on flights of the BioSAR instrument in Panama and Costa Rica
• Flights were conducted in coordination with other NASA vegetation-measurement instruments on the NASA C-130
• American Electronics has received $280k in Phase III funding from DoD

 

• TBioSAR™ supports NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise by providing a method of remote measurement of biomass greater than 200 tons/hectare
• Eighty percent of the Earth’s vegetative biomass resides in forests with high biomass density, and BioSAR™ is a low-cost remote sensing instrument that will provide critical biomass measurements
 

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