Monitoring informal settlements using SAR polarimetry

The most pervasive form of land-cover change in South Africa is human settlement expansion. In many cases, new human settlements and settlement expansion are informal and occur in areas that were previously covered by natural vegetation. The spatial layout is often not planned, but informally developed by the inhabitants of the settlements themselves. The use of optical satellite data for the detection and mapping of new informal settlements has been an active research topic, but the use of SAR data for settlement mapping and detection has remained largely unexplored in Southern Africa. The objective of this study is to investigate the possible role that SAR polarimetry could play in the monitoring of informal settlements.