Observing seasonal variabilities of a permafrost landscape with PolSAR, InSAR and Pol-InSAR

Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing is an established approach for observing Earth processes. The combination of different types of SAR acquisitions in polarimetric, interferometric, and polarimetric-interferometric frameworks is well studied for retrieving parameters of certain landscape features, such as forests and glaciers. These frameworks have only been rarely applied to permafrost regions, characterized by particular dielectric and structural properties, in particular frozen ground. Here, we investigate the effect of permafrost characteristics on the different SAR imaging modes. This study performs an analysis of the SAR data retrieved during an airborne campaign conducted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the Canadian low Arctic. Established polarimetric SAR, SAR interferometry, and polarimetric SAR interferometry techniques are applied on the region of interest. For each of these techniques, results are analyzed in several dimensions. Winter and summer observables are compared, the influence of vegetation type is assessed, and differences between results obtained at different radar frequencies are shown. This study leads the path toward the retrieval of soil and vegetation parameters in permafrost tundra environments using multimodal SAR techniques.