Data and methods
3.1. Remote sensing data
A large number of aerial photographs and satellite SAR images
covering the quake-hit areas had been acquired as soon as possible
since May 14, 2008. The multi-source and multi-resolution airborne
and satellite SAR images acquired for Wenchuan earthquake
have played important roles in damage information extraction at
early emergency stage. The characteristics of the SAR data and
ancillary data used in this study were listed in Tables 1 and 2.
3.2. SAR data radiometric calibration
ALOS PALSAR Level 1.5 product and TerraSAR-X Level 1B product
used in this study give the image pixel value (or digital number
(DN)). Absolute radiometric calibration was performed to these
SAR data to derive backscattering coefficient sigma nought (r0)
from the DN values. Sigma nought is defined as the measure of
the strength of radar signals backscattered from a distributed target
(i.e. target that is large compared to the pixel dimensions), usually
expressed in dB. This permits to minimize the differences in
the image radiometry and to make any SAR images obtained from
different imaging geometries easily comparable and compatible to
acquisitions made by different sensors (Infoterra GmbH, 2008).
For PALSAR Level 1.5 products, the backscattering coefficient
sigma nought over distributed target was derived from Eq.