Digital Elevation Model estimation and recovery of displacements over the Great Aletsch Glacier

Abstract

Snow is one of the most important cryosphere parameters having a key role on Earth's climate by regulating albedo and is directly linked to water reservoirs. For this reason, there is a special effort to expand the scientific knowledge on snow covered environments and to monitor them. For example, by generating digital elevation models (DEMs) of glaciers and comparing the seasonal changes in height in order to assess glacier mass loss. However, the properties of the snowpack such as grain size and crystal structure, density, layering are well-known to influence the electromagnetic signal responses. Such variations have a direct impact on the signal penetration which add further challenges to estimate height accurately on cryosphere environments like glaciers. In this paper, we present a DEM of Aletsch glacier, Switzerland, based on the dataset retrieved with KAPRI, a Ku-Band polarimetric-interferometric ground-based radar with monostatic and bistatic capabilities. One further investigation is focused on the recovery of the displacements caused by the glacier flow to improve the accuracy of the digital elevation model (DEM)