Abstract
Abstract. Ice flow velocity is a vital parameter for estimating the ice mass balance of glaciers in Antarctica. Especially long time serial observation of the surface velocity is of great significance to assessing the relationship between Antarctic ice materials and global climate change. However, the existing research on Antarctic ice velocity based on remote sensing data since 1970s due to the harsh climate in Antarctica. This paper presents an ice flow velocity estimating method includes image pre-processing, geometric model reconstruction, image ortho-rectification and feature matching by using ARGON images token in 1963 and Landsat images collected form 1973 to 1989.Considering the temporal-spatial distributions of ARGON images and Landsat images in Antarctica, two different methods respectively based on ortho-photos pair and Non-Ortho photos are adopted in this paper. More specifically, when there exist two stereo pairs taken in different time in the glacier region, after being ortho-rectified, the stereo pairs can be used to calculate ice flow velocity based on feature matching method. Otherwise, a parallax decomposition method that separates the effect of the terrain relief from the ice flow motion is applied when there only exists one stereo pair with a certain time interval. With this method, glacier surface velocity is available in the glacier region lacked enough stereo pairs. The methods mentioned above for estimating ice flow velocity are applied in Totten, Amery and Fimbul, etc. in eastern Antarctica. Furthermore, a 1960-80s ice flow speed map in the main glaciers of East Antarctica is produced for the first time.
Highlights
Ice flow velocity and its variation is important feature of glaciers and is a vital parameter in assessing the balance of Antarctic ice sheets, which can use to study the ice flux and ice shelf stability of Antarctic glaciers (Rignot et al, 2011)
The long time serial reconstruction of the ice flow field is helpful for the quantitative assessment and accurate prediction of sea level change caused by global climate change, which is critical to the study of the interaction between Antarctic ice sheets and global climate changing
The accurate exterior orientation (EO) parameters of the stereo ARGON images were implemented via Bundle Adjustment with LPS software (Leica Photogrammetric Suite, ERDAS IMAGINE by Intergraph).several accurate and well-distributed tie points were selected in Bundle adjustment process and used to get the epipolar images through fundamental matrix with random-sample consensus algorithm (Hartley and Zisserman, 2003)
Summary
Ice flow velocity and its variation is important feature of glaciers and is a vital parameter in assessing the balance of Antarctic ice sheets, which can use to study the ice flux and ice shelf stability of Antarctic glaciers (Rignot et al, 2011). The ground survey method using snow stakes and the GPS is the easiest way to measure the ice flow rate in the Antarctic, and long-term data is available through perennial measurements. The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W7, 2017 ISPRS Geospatial Week 2017, 18–22 September 2017, Wuhan, China very difficult to study and analysis the variation of the Antarctic ice shelves on a long time series. Another source of remote sensing data is the early satellite images recorded on films collected by the film-based satellites like ARGON. This study using parallax decomposition technique through rigorous geometric positioning based on the history of the satellite image data such as 1960s ARGON images and Landsat images from 1970s to 1980s to acquire the Antarctic ice velocity from 1960s to 1980s, which can extend the time span of Antarctic ice flow to 1960s
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