Abstract
Abstract. The Antarctic ice sheet response to the global climate change, specifically the ice flow speed change of the glaciers, has been investigated by many researchers. However, most research results cover the period since 1970s or after the operation of the LANDSAT series. The availability of the film-based ARGON KH-5 data makes it possible to quantify the changes of the Antarctic ice sheet in 1960s. To meet the challenges of processing the low quality film-based ARGON images, a novel method was developed to allow estimating the ice sheet surface motion and reconstructing the surface model simultaneously from ARGON stereo images by decomposing the total parallaxes to terrain and motion based components. A photogrammetric approach was developed to distinguish stable ice surface features from those on motion and use them for recovering the camera orientation information. Several existing Antarctic mapping products were used to establish the ground control. The ice flow speed field is reconstructed using a hierarchical image matching strategy. Firstly, epipolar images are generated via a fundamental matrix derived from correspondences used in the geometric modelling process, and then an image pyramid is built. Second, the normalized cross-correlation (NCC) technique is conducted on each layer of the pyramid to match the extracted features. Since the images were taken at different times, during which the glacier motion occurred, the measured total parallaxes are decomposed to terrain and motion parallaxes according to given ice flow directions which are derived from the iteratively produced DTM or images. Finally, a speed map and a DTM can be generated at each level of the image pyramid. This process repeats itself. At the bottom of the pyramid the final speed map and DTM are produced at a resolution of about 60m and represent the ice flow field of 1963. This approach was tested using two ARGON stereo-pairs in Rayner glacier in East Antarctica. Both the ice flow speed map and DTM were generated, and their difference with recent products is briefly discussed.
Highlights
Effects of global climate change have been repeatedly reported for the past decades
This paper is to propose a new analytical method for estimation of Antarctic ice sheet surface motion in 1960s using historical DISP photographs
2.1.1 Ice Velocity Estimation via Parallax Decomposition: This approach is feasible if and only if two essential conditions are met, that is, the stereo image planes should be almost parallel to the ground plane, and the stereo pair from which the correspondences are identified should be transformed to epipolar images
Summary
Effects of global climate change have been repeatedly reported for the past decades. As one of the significant responses to the global change, the ice velocity has been investigated to estimate the Antarctic ice mass as well as its contribution to the global sea level change. Compared with the ground-based method, the remote sensing approach can produce timely observing results over regional scale that is not reachable by human beings due to the harsh environment, making it a major means in research field to obtain the Antarctica ice flow velocity during the recent decades with modern satellite observations. By reviewing the existing literature, there is no Antarctica ice velocity product available that is derived from the film-based ARGON DISP images in 1960s This attributes mainly to the challenges for processing the declassified satellite photographs. This paper is to propose a new analytical method for estimation of Antarctic ice sheet surface motion in 1960s using historical DISP photographs This method is based on the parallax decomposition of two adjacent matched ice-flow features from two DISP images with different acquisition time. Besides the ice flow velocity, the terrain model on the ice flow region could be derived from the parallax analysis as a by-product
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