Abstract
This paper provides an initial assessment of the qualifica- tion of polarimetric parameters for forest cover mapping in Siberian boreal forest. This investigation is carried out in the framework of JAXA’s Kyoto and Carbon Initiative. The impact of the additional polarimetric information will be related to the backscattering intensities derived with the respective polarimetric acquisitions. The dataset consists of two Level 1.1 PLR scenes acquired during the calibra- tion/validation phase and is thus not determined by the schedule of the ALOS acquisition strategy. First results show the capability of polarimetric parameters to extend the intensity based data set in terms of a higher overall separability of forest and non forest and to some extend the feasibility of subdividing both basic classes.