Animating ASAR backscatter to monitor ice shelf front retreat – Northern George VI Ice Shelf Front

Abstract

We present a 4D visualization approach that facilitates the interpretation and analysis of snow and ice variations which are detected at ice shelf fronts and their surroundings. The study area is the northern George VI Ice Shelf Front and part of Marguerite Bay. This approach makes use of 3D geocoded models generated from Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) wide swath mode (WSM) images. The third dimension, which in general is associated with height information, is replaced by the radar backscattering coefficient . Time is considered the fourth dimension. By visualizing this information, using overlay and animation, new ice, winter ice and drift ice can be distinguished and spatio-temporal variances in their distribution can be detected. Furthermore, the George VI Ice Shelf Front behaviour can be analysed. Open-source software has been used in this study for all the processing and visualization techniques. Additionally, all images are obtained free of cost. Consequently, an economic solution has been realized that does not harm the investigation. Our approach fulfils the requirements of an accurate and comprehensible visualization of complex, higher dimensional and large data sets.