Abstract
Sea ice monitoring and classification is one of the main applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing. C-band SAR imagery is regarded as an optimal choice for sea ice applications; however, other SAR frequencies has not been extensively assessed. In this study, we evaluate the potential of fully polarimetric L-band SAR imagery for monitoring and classifying sea ice during dry winter conditions compared to fully polarimetric C-band SAR. Twelve polarimetric SAR parameters are derived using sets of C- and L-band SAR imagery and the capabilities of the derived parameters for the discrimination between First Year Ice (FYI) and Old Ice (OI), which is considered to be a mixture of Second Year Ice (SYI) and Multiyear Ice (MYI), are investigated. Feature vectors of effective C- and L-band polarimetric parameters are extracted and used for sea ice classification. Results indicate that C-band SAR provides high classification accuracy (98.99%) of FYI and OI in comparison to the obtained accuracy using L-band SAR (82.17% and 81.85%), as expected. However, L-band SAR was found to classify only the MYI floes as OI, while merging both FYI and SYI into one separate class. This comes in contrary to C-band SAR, which classifies as OI both MYI and SYI. This indicates a new potential for discriminating SYI from MYI by combining C- and L-band SAR in dry ice winter conditions.
Highlights
One of the earliest applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery was the classification of sea ice [1]
The potential of L-band SAR for sea ice type classification in dry ice winter conditions was investigated in this study
A set of polarimetric parameters were derived and evaluated to discriminate between First Year Ice (FYI) and Old Ice (OI), where the latter was a mixture of Multiyear Ice (MYI) and Second Year Ice (SYI)
Summary
One of the earliest applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery was the classification of sea ice [1]. The polarimetric SAR signatures of different sea ice types were studied for the first time in C-, L-, and P-band. C-band SAR imagery has been widely used for sea ice extent and area classification as well as concentration estimation [13,14]. The studied parameters suggested that the polarimetric coherence and the phase difference between the circular polarization backscattering coefficients RR (right-right) and LL (left-left) were found useful for the discrimination between the tested ice types [24]. The aforementioned studies highlight the potential of L-band SAR imagery, the sensitivity of L-band polarimetric SAR parameters to ice type differences has yet to be extensively analyzed. The polarimetric signatures of thick FYI and Old Ice (OI) are qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed in sets of polarimetric parameters extracted from ALOS-2 full polarimetric L-band SAR data. The Random Forest (RF) classification algorithm is applied on the most effective of the polarimetric parameters to classify both C- and L-band imagery and the results are compared with regional ice charts of the Canadian Ice Service (CIS) and in situ observation data
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