In this study, space remote sensing data and crop specific information from the ESA-led AgriSAR 2009 campaign are
used for studying the profiles of C-band SAR backscatter signals and multispectral-based leaf area index (LAI) over the
growth period of canola, pea and wheat. In addition, the correlations between radar backscatter parameters and the crop
yields were analyzed, based on extracted statistics of temporal profiles. The results show that the HV backscatter and
LAI are correlated differently before and after LAI peak. In addition, the coefficient of determination between peakrelated
statistics from polarimetric indicator profiles and yield for pea fields can reach up to 0.68, and for canola and
wheat up to 0.47 and 0.5, respectively. HV backscatter and coherence between HH and VV are most.
The paper debates the impact of sensor configuration diversity on the crop classification performance. More specifically,
the analysis accounts for multi-temporal and polarimetric C-Band SAR information used individually and in synergy
with Multispectral imagery. The dataset used for the investigation comprises several multi-angle Radarsat-2 (RS2) fullpol
acquisitions and RapidEye (RE) images both at fine resolution collected over the Indian Head (Canada) agricultural
site area and spanning the summer crop growth cycle from May to September. A quasi-Maximum Likelihood (ML)
classification approach applied at per-field level has been adopted to integrate the different data sources. The analysis
provided evidence on the overall accuracy enhancement with respect to the individual sensor performances, with 4%-8%
increase over a single RE image, a 40%-10% increase over a single 1-pol/full-pol image and 15%-0% increase over
multitemporal 1-pol/full-pol RS2 series respectively. A more detailed crop analysis revealed that in particular canola and
the cereals benefit from the integration, whereas lentil and flax can experience similar or worse performance when
compared to the RE-based classification. Comments and suggestions for further development are presented.