Global PALSAR-2/PALSAR Yearly Mosaic, version 2

JAXA/ALOS/PALSAR/YEARLY/SAR_EPOCH
Dataset Availability
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z–2023-01-01T00:00:00Z
Dataset Provider
Earth Engine Snippet
ee.ImageCollection("JAXA/ALOS/PALSAR/YEARLY/SAR_EPOCH")
Tags
alos alos2 eroc jaxa palsar palsar2 sar

Description

The global 25m PALSAR/PALSAR-2 mosaic is a seamless global SAR image created by mosaicking strips of SAR imagery from PALSAR/PALSAR-2. For each year and location, the strip data were selected through visual inspection of the browse mosaics available over the period, with those showing minimum response to surface moisture preferentially used. Only data from the target year have been used for each annual mosaic, and hence no gap-filling using data from previous years in case of gaps in the annual global coverage.

There is no data for 2011-2014 due to the gap between ALOS and ALOS-2 temporal coverage.

The SAR imagery was ortho-rectificatied and slope corrected using the digital surface model ALOS World 3D - 30m (AW3D30).

A destriping process (Shimada & Isoguchi, 2002, 2010) was applied to equalize the intensity differences between neighboring strips, occurring largely due to seasonal and daily differences in surface moisture conditions.

Polarization data are stored as 16-bit digital numbers (DN). The DN values can be converted to gamma naught values in decibel unit (dB) using the following equation:

  • γ₀ = 10log₁₀(DN²) - 83.0 dB

Attention:

  • Backscatter values may vary significantly from path to path over high latitude forest areas. This is due to the change of backscattering intensity caused by freezing trees in winter.

More information is available in the provider's Dataset Description.

Bands

Resolution
25 meters

Bands

Name Units Description
HH

HH polarization backscattering coefficient, 16-bit DN.

HV

HV polarization backscattering coefficient, 16-bit DN.

angle deg

Local incidence angle.

epoch

Observation date timestamp (milliseconds since Jan 1, 1970). This band is computed on the fly from the 'date' band of the raw data, which represents the difference in days between 2014-05-24 and the observation date.

qa

Processing information.

qa Class Table

Value Color Description
0 #000000 No data
50 #0000ff Ocean and water
100 #aaaa00 Radar layover
150 #005555 Radar shadowing
255 #aa9988 Land

Terms of Use

Terms of Use

JAXA retains ownership of the dataset and cannot guarantee any problem caused by or possibly caused by using the datasets. Anyone wishing to publish any results using the datasets should clearly acknowledge the ownership of the data in the publication.

Citations

Citations:
  • Masanobu Shimada, Takuya Itoh, Takeshi Motooka, Manabu Watanabe, Shiraishi Tomohiro, Rajesh Thapa, and Richard Lucas, "New Global Forest/Non-forest Maps from ALOS PALSAR Data (2007-2010)", Remote Sensing of Environment, 155, pp. 13-31, December 2014. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2014.04.014.

Explore with Earth Engine

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var dataset = ee.ImageCollection('JAXA/ALOS/PALSAR/YEARLY/SAR_EPOCH')
                  .filter(ee.Filter.date('2017-01-01', '2018-01-01'));
var sarHh = dataset.select('HH');
var sarHhVis = {
  min: 0.0,
  max: 10000.0,
};
Map.setCenter(136.85, 37.37, 4);
Map.addLayer(sarHh, sarHhVis, 'SAR HH');
Open in Code Editor