Monitoring the Subsurface of an Alpine Glacier Using Polarimetric SAR Observations at L-Band
Conference: EUSAR 2016 - 11th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
06/06/2016 - 06/09/2016 at Hamburg, Germany
Proceedings: EUSAR 2016
Pages: 6Language: englishTyp: PDF
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Authors:
Parrella, Giuseppe; Papathanassiou, Konstantinos P. (German Aerospace Center (DLR), Microwaves and Radar Institute, Wessling, Germany)
Farinotti, Daniel (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland)
Hajnsek, Irena (German Aerospace Center (DLR), Microwaves and Radar Institute, Wessling, Germany & ETH Zurich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, Zurich, Switzerland)
Abstract:
Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) sensors represent, nowadays, an established tool for the observation of glaciarized areas. At dry snow conditions, such sensors combine the penetration capability of microwaves into snow/ice and the sensitivity of polarimetry to different scattering mechanisms. Therefore, PolSAR measurements are sensitive to the surface as well as near-surface features, especially at lower frequencies. A key objective of this study is to investigate the potential to monitor the seasonal variability of surface and near-surface features of an Alpine glacier by means of multi-temporal airborne PolSAR data at L-band. The results of the polarimetric analysis are compared to ground-based Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and snow depth measurements performed in coordination with the SAR campaign.