Ice Volume Characterization using Long-Wavelength Airborne PolSAR Data

Abstract

The interest in studying land ice for glaciological and climate change research has increased in recent years. The need of information on a global scale makes synthetic aperture radar (SAR) suitable for these studies. Moreover, at long wavelengths, SAR systems have the capability to penetrate into the ice. Hence they are sensitive to glacier surface as well as near-surface (up to several tens of meters depth) structures. However, SAR backscattering from ice remains poorly understood including the importance of scattering from the glacier surface compared to scattering from the ice volume (layers), and the dependencies on frequency and on glacier facie. The objective of this study is the development of an electromagnetic model to relate PolSAR observables to glacier and ice caps facie. Validation will be performed with airborne Pol-SAR data at L- and P-band collected by the DLR’s E-SAR system within the ICESAR campaign in Svalbard, Norway.