Mapping arctic landfast ice extent using L-band synthetic aperture radar interferometry

Abstract

In recent years methods have been developed to extract the seaward landfast ice edge from series of remote sensing images, with most of them relying on incoherent change detection in optical, infrared, or radar amplitude imagery. While such approaches provide valuable results, some still lack the required level of robustness and all lack the ability to fully automate the detection and mapping of landfast ice over large areas and long time spans. This paper introduces an alternative approach to mapping landfast ice extent that is based on coherent processing of interferometric L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. The approach is based on a combined interpretation of interferometric phase pattern and interferometric coherence images to extract the extent and stability of landfast ice. Due to the low complexity of the base imagery used for landfast ice extraction, significant improvements in automation and reduction of required manual interactions by operators can be achieved. A performance analysis shows that L-band interferometric SAR (InSAR) data enable the mapping of landfast ice with high robustness and accuracy for a wide range of environmental conditions.

Assessing integration of intensity, polarimetric scattering, interferometric coherence and spatial texture metrics in PALSAR-derived land cover classification

“…Quantifying the degree of similarity, interferometric coherence is close or equal to one for two identical images and close or equal to zero for two completely different images (e.g. Meyer et al, 2011). Furthermore, textural information is considered an important data source for the description of spatial pattern and variation of surface features.…”

“…Smith and Askne, 2001;Engdahl et al, 2001;Blaes and Defourny, 2003;Meyer et al, 2011). The interferometric coherence c is defined as,…”

Sea ice local surface topography from single-pass satellite InSAR measurements: a feasibility study

“…In the literature, satellite constellations consisting of more than two receiver microsatellites (and a satellite with an ac-tive SAR ahead or behind) have been discussed (e.g., Krieger et al, 2003;Moreira et al, 2002). The general advantage of configurations consisting of N > 2 receiver satellites is that the variations of the across-track baseline lengths as a function of latitude can be minimized by picking the most suitable transmitter-receiver combination.…”

“…Hence the investigations concentrated on indications of differential motion due to deformation processes in fast ice, links between ice properties and interferometric coherence, and mapping of fast ice extent. (Dammert et al, 1998;Meyer et al, 2011;Berg et al, 2015).…”

An Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) Habitat Suitability Model to Identify Overwinter Conditions for Coregonine Whitefishes in Arctic Lagoons

“…InSAR techniques have been previously used to identify areas of bottomfast and floating ice in estuarine areas as well as for the identification of landfast ice in the Beaufort Sea (Meyer et al. ; Yue et al. ; Dammann et al.…”