Description

The objective of the workshop is to provide a point-of-entry to radar and radar polarimetry theory and analysis. The workshop will present radar and radar polarimetry from a practical perspective, and to work with single-polarized, multi-polarized and quad-polarized radar images. The workshop will provide an in-depth discussion of wave and scattering polarimetry, and target decomposition techniques. . The workshop integrates theory with practical exercises that will use the RADARSAT-2 polarimetric image acquired over Cape Town. The objective of the exercises is to provide experience with the manipulation of radar and polarimetric radar images, and to augment the topics presented in the theory. The exercises also provide exposure to the various polarimetric data analysis and visualization algorithms that are available. To compliment the theory section, an overview of single-polarized, multi-polarized and polarimetric radar applications will be presented. The applications will cover many areas including agriculture, defense and security, forestry, geology, coastal environment, hydrology, ice, and marine surveillance. Lecturer's biography Prof. Brigitte Leblon is professor of remote sensing at the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick (UNB), Canada. She holds an Agricultural Engineer degree from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and a PhD in remote sensing of the École Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier (France). She has engaged in geoinformatics and remote sensing research for more than twenty five years and has published over 120 refereed publications. With her students, she won several prestigious awards. Dr. Leblon’s research and teaching offerings proliferated in short order, with course offerings not only in air photo interpretation, but also in remote sensing, including optical, thermal infrared, radar and radar polarimetry. Dr. Leblon pioneered the development of online courses in geoinformatics. Dr. Leblon’s online courses are offered not only in English, but also in French and in Spanish. The courses attract dozens of students from across Canada and around the world, from Japan to France and from USA to Australia. Dr. Leblon is also very active in university affairs, having served as the associate director of the UNB Wood Science and Technology Centre, and serving as the coordinator of the European strategy of UNB and as the director of TRANSFOR-M, a dual degree Master’s program in forestry and environment between Europe and Canada which got in 2014 an international award for the most innovative graduate program. She was also teaching for the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and the Geological Survey of South Africa and is a visiting professor of the Faculty of Forestry at the Albert-Ludwigs Universität of Freiburg (Germany). She is currently principal investigators in several international research projects, including one on Kruger National Park. Finally, she is associate editor of IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing and of Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing and served as guest editor for several international journals. She is also heavily involved in the Canadian Remote Sensing Society, as secretary, chair of the Atlantic Chapter, chair of the working group#5 (Awards and Certifications), and representative of the Atlantic region at the Executive of the Society. Dr. Armand LaRocque is a research associate in remote sensing at the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick (UNB), Canada, as well as part-time professor of geology, physical geography and geomatics at the Université de Moncton, Canada. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree (physical geography) as well as a Master of Science degree from the Université de Sherbrooke, Canada, and a Ph.D. degree in geography from the Université de Montréal, Canada. In addition to his geomorphology and his physical geography background, Dr. LaRocque is also a specialist in air photo interpretation, remote sensing and GIS. He took part in one of the first research projects about the civil use of the SAR images in Earth’s surface mapping in Canada, as part of the first Canada’s SAR satellite mission (RADARSAT-1). His most recent research focuses on the combined use of SAR images (RADARSAT-2 and ALOS-PALSAR) with optical images (LANDSAT-5 TM, LANDSAT-7 ETM+ and LANDSAT-8 OLI) for land cover, surficial geology, permafrost, and wetland mapping in Canada. He had already published more than 70 refereed publications and conference presentations. Dr. LaRocque is also a good teacher, having taught 23 different courses more than 70 times, both in French and in English. He also co-authored with Dr. Leblon several online courses in geomatics (air photo-interpretation, digital image processing and geographic information systems) and participated in numerous media interviews.

Presenters