ICESAR 2007: Technical Assistance for the Deployment of Airborne SAR and Geophysical Measurements during the IceSAR 2007

Abstract

The ICESAR campaign was carried out in Svalbard in the period from March 8 to April 26, 2007 consisted of two parts, taking place over three weeks in March and over two and a half weeks in April, respectively. The main objectives of ICESAR were to acquire SAR images and complementary data over sea and land ice for preparation of the Sentinel-1 mission and for providing a basis for the assessment of potential applications of the Earth Explorer BIOMASS mission in the monitoring of the Polar Regions. The campaign was executed in collaboration between DLR, AWI, and ESA. Despite the rough Arctic environment and the highly variable weather conditions all data could be successfully acquired as planned and desribed in the Experimental Plan that was delivered to ESA. Furthermore, also additional flights could be carried out that were not included in the Experimental Plan, with data acquisitions over sea ice in the Frame Strait northwest of Svalbard, and over land ice with the P-band Sounder. All acquired SAR data over sea and land ice were processed and are of good quality for further analysis. The absolute radiometric accuracy lies within the ± 2 dB and the relative within ± 0.5 dB. In this document first order analysis were carried out for the derivation of ice structure parameters and identification of bedrock. The main physical parameter describing ice structure is the extinction that was derived using polarimetric decomposition in combination with polarimetric SAR interferometry. Strong differences between the two test sites could be reported, as expected. Further P-band sounder data were processed and analysed. The identification of bedrock and thus the thickness of the ice layer was the main objective. The best result was obtained with the identification of the bedrock up to 570 m.