RTC

Overview¶

The Radiometric Terrain-Corrected from Sentinel-1 (RTC-S1) product provides calibrated, terrain-corrected SAR backscatter suitable for direct analysis and change detection. RTC-S1 removes topographic distortions and radiometric biases, enabling consistent multi-temporal comparison across Sentinel-1 acquisitions, and is also used as input to OPERA’s DSWx-S1 product.

Product level & distribution¶

• Processing level: Level-2

• DAAC: ASF DAAC

• Project: NASA OPERA (JPL)

Related product¶

• RTC-S1-STATIC — geometry layers (local incidence angle, layover/shadow masks, etc.) corresponding to RTC-S1 products.

Applications¶

• Multi-temporal backscatter change detection

• Flood and surface-water mapping (input to DSWx-S1)

• Forest, wetland, and agricultural monitoring

• Analysis-ready SAR input for machine-learning workflows

Inputs¶

• Sentinel-1 Single-Look Complex (SLC) data

• Precise Sentinel-1 orbit ephemerides

• Copernicus 30 m digital elevation model

Coverage¶

Near-global — all land masses excluding Antarctica.

References¶

• OPERA project page: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/go/opera

• ASF DAAC: https://asf.alaska.edu

• RTC-S1 at ASF: https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/catalog/asf-opera-l2-rtc-s1-v1-1