Retrieval of digital elevation models from Sentinel-1 radar data – open applications, techniques, and limitations

Braun, Andreas

doi:10.1515/geo-2020-0246

Cited by 67 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 119 publications

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“…Improvements in the spatial and temporal coverage and resolution of satellites (e.g., Sentinel-1, CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3 and ICESat-2) 7,89,92,93 coupled with developments in lake detection automation 82 and machine learning 247 will likely allow these gaps to be filled, particularly for lakes that are smaller and traditionally more difficult to detect. The transition from a set of individual satellites to systems dominated by fleets and constellations of many satellites, will enable increased availability of high-resolution multi-temporal DSMs 97,248 , which are particularly well suited for picking out smaller lakes 55,59,249 . Future satellite missions, including ESA's…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subglacial lakes and their changing role in a warming climate

Livingstone

Rutishauser

et al. 2022

Nat Rev Earth Environ

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Subglacial lakes store ancient climate records, provide habitats for life, and modulate ice flow, basal hydrology, biogeochemical fluxes and geomorphic activity. In this Review, we construct the first global inventory of 773 subglacial lakes, including 675 from Antarctica (59 newly identified in this study), 64 from Greenland, 2 beneath Devon Ice Cap, 6 beneath Iceland's ice caps, and 26 from valley glaciers. The inventory is used to evaluate subglacial lake environments, dynamics, and their wider impact on ice flow and sediment transport. We suggest their behaviour is conditioned by the subglacial setting and the hydrologic, dynamic and mass balance regime of the ice mass above. Using space-time substitution, we predict fewer and smaller lakes but increased activity with higher discharge drainages of shorter duration where climate warming causes ice-surface steepening. Coupling to surface melt and rainfall inputs will modulate fill-drain cycles and seasonally enhance oxic processes. Higher discharges cause large, transient ice-flow accelerations, but might result in overall net slowdown due to development of efficient subglacial drainage. Future subglacial lake research requires new drilling technologies, and the integration of geophysics, satellite monitoring and numerical modelling, which will provide new insight into their wider role in a changing Earth system.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subglacial lakes and their changing role in a warming climate

Livingstone

Rutishauser

et al. 2022

Nat Rev Earth Environ

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“…The processing to obtain the coherence maps were carried out in SNAP, and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) ArcGIS software was used for subsequent evaluation and all mappings. Details of procedure for obtaining coherence between two SAR image pairs using SNAP, which is part of InSAR DEM derivation workflow can be found in [2,13] -------------------------------------------…”

Section: Data Acquisition and Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Good coherence is a basic requirement for good interferogram and InSAR DEM derivation. Factors such as weather conditions IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1064/1/012027 2 during data acquisition, image baselines, image acquisition geometry and landcover can affect the coherence between SAR data pairs used for interferometric analyses [2,3]. Thus, due to volume scattering and wind-induced changes in radar signal dielectric properties [4,5], coherence is generally low in vegetated surfaces [6,7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar coherence constraints in heavily vegetated tropics

Chindo

Hashim²,

Rasib³

2022

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

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Success of Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique for deriving digital elevation model (DEM) in the heavily vegetated humid tropic using Sentinel-1 SAR has been controversial, owing to the difficulty in achieving good coherence. Yet achievable coherence with Sentinel-1 SAR over the heavily vegetated humid tropic has rarely been reported. Consequently, this paper evaluates coherence achievable with Sentinel-1 SAR over the heavily vegetated humid tropic. Twelve Sentinel-1 SAR over part of Johor selected based on perpendicular and temporal baselines considerations, were used as pairs of six reference and secondary images respectively and processed using Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP) to derive coherence maps and analysed accordingly. The result shows that regardless of image pairs baseline characteristics, coherence of above 0.6 over the heavily vegetated humid tropic with Sentinel-1 SAR can only be achieved in barely 10% of the study area. This result shall serve as eye-opener to geoscience community, especially SAR enthusiast looking forward to leveraging on SAR clouds penetrating ability; and Sentinel-1 SAR open access and short revisit circle to apply Sentinel-1 SAR in deriving DEM over heavily vegetated humid tropical environment. However, future studies shall focus on assessing consistency of good coherence patches and their usability in acquiring elevation.

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“…S1 is one of the current largest space-borne missions providing free and open accessible SAR data. Furthermore, the European Space Agency (ESA) has made the free software SNAP (Sentinel Application Platform) available for users, enabling an easier and focused exploitation of products from the Copernicus Programme [17,26]. The S1 mission is a two-satellite constellation (Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B) acquiring a microwave C-band (5.6 cm wavelength).…”

Section: Sentinel 1 Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ordinarily, these algorithms tend to avoid these areas during unwrapping [15,16], so the approach has proven to consistently fail where signal coherence values are low. This makes InSAR-derived DEM over vegetation highly unreliable [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry

Petris¹,

Sarvia²,

Mondino³

2022

Earth

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Forest height is a key parameter in forestry. SAR interferometry (InSAR) techniques have been extensively adopted to retrieve digital elevation models (DEM) to give a representation of the continuous variation of the Earth’s topography, including forests. Unfortunately, InSAR has been proven to fail over vegetation due to low coherence values; therefore, all phase unwrapping algorithms tend to avoid these areas, making InSAR-derived DEM over vegetation unreliable. In this work, a sensitivity analysis was performed with the aim of properly initializing the relevant operational parameters (baseline and multilooking factor) to maximize the theoretical accuracy of the height difference between the forest and reference point. Some scenarios were proposed to test the resulting “optimal values”, as estimated at the previous step. A simple model was additionally proposed and calibrated, aimed at predicting the optimal baseline value (and therefore image pair selection) for height uncertainty minimization. All our analyses were conducted using free available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to support the operational transfer into the forest sector. Finally, the potential uncertainty affecting resulting height measures was quantified, showing that a value lower than 5 m can be expected once all user-dependent parameters (i.e., baseline, multilooking factor, temporal baseline) are properly tuned.

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Retrieval of digital elevation models from Sentinel-1 radar data – open applications, techniques, and limitations

Cited by 67 publications

References 119 publications

Subglacial lakes and their changing role in a warming climate

Subglacial lakes and their changing role in a warming climate

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar coherence constraints in heavily vegetated tropics

Uncertainties and Perspectives on Forest Height Estimates by Sentinel-1 Interferometry

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