An embodiment of a method for processing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image data includes acquiring a multi-polarization SAR image of a terrestrial region, pre-processing the SAR image to remove or reduce radiometric and geometric errors, and separating the SAR image into a plurality of channels, each channel representing an image associated with a different polarization mode. The method also includes calculating a characteristic of the region for each polarization channel, acquiring ground data and estimating the characteristic of the region based on the ground data, estimating a correlation of the calculated characteristic for each polarization channel with the estimated characteristic based on the ground data, selecting one or more polarization channels having a correlation exceeding a selected value, and generating a SAR image including only the selected polarization channels based on the comparison.