Case studies of frozen ground monitoring using PALSAR/ALOS data

Abstract

Frozen ground is a sensitive indicator of how our home planet is changing. In the meantime, new spaceborne SAR systems have been launched, such as the polarimetric PALSAR sensor onboard ALOS in January 2006. In this paper, the relevance of L-band polarimetric SAR data for extracting information on frozen ground is presented. Dealing with ground assessments, the necessity for a validated Electromagnetic (EM) model is of importance. The adequation between Oh's po-larimetric EM model and PALSAR data is first studied over agricultural bare fields in Hokkaido, Japan. The assessment of residual liquid water can be realized by means of bare soil EM backscattering model. Over natural wildland area, an approach is proposed in order to tackle the effect of the vegetation or other irrelevant effects. The monitoring of permafrost active layer is performed over the ANWR, Alaska.