Preliminary Results on the Determination of the Sources of Scattering from Vegetation Canopies at 10 GHzf I. Corn and Milo

Fine-resolution measurements of the radar backscattering characteristics of individual parts of plants were performed during the summer of 1983. The measurements were aimed at determining the sources of scattering from the vegetation canopies. Measured results show both that returns from the top leaves of a corn plant and the head of a milo plant provided the strongest return for each plant and that these two parts show nearly isotropic backscattering properties. The attenuation of the beam in penetrating through the top leaves of the corn plant increased from 5 to 6dB at 0° to about 10dB at 30°.