Monitoring of ice growth on the East channel and on shallow lakes in the Mackenzie Δ

Abstract:
The global warming has a substantial impact on the local geomorphological system of the arctic environment. Earth observation data has the capacity to provide accurate high resolution information. Due to the all-weather and day and night observation capability Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) are particularly well suited for the mapping and monitoring of arctic and isolated environments. This paper presents the idea of a SAR-post processing system and the corresponding results that were achieved using a time series of dual-pol TerraSAR-X data from Mackenzie Δ. It comprises Kennaugh decomposition, ortho-rectification, radiometric enhancement, normalization and the classification of different ice types.