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One of the most important hydrologic variables is the total precipitation over a finite area during a specified period of time. The area of interest frequently is located within rugged terrain that offers a difficult background for observation by remote sensing, including weather radar. Surface observations at widely scattered points within the region often fail to provide sufficiently representative data for inferring the spatially-integrated precipitation. On the other hand, it is believed that useful information on precipitation can be deduced from data collected routinely by meteorological satellites.© (1972) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

There have been some technological improvements for identifying and interpreting side-looking radar imagery since the appearance of Hoffman's review article on radar technology in 1960 [1]. These are marked by the refinement of traditional photo-interpretation techniques, and the use of false-color enhancement and isodensitracer [microdensitometer] attempting to correlate density patterns with terrain features [2]. These methods proved to be more sophisticated for individual case studies, but not efficient for processing the massive inflow of SLR data from aerospace platforms as expected in the future. The purpose of this paper is to suggest an automatic pattern recognition system of SLR imagery based upon discriminatory analyses on the isodensitracer and TV scanned data.© (1972) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.