Investigation of the sensitivity response of Touzi target scattering decomposition to modeled early ice growth

Abstract

ABSTRACT Touzi’s scattering vector model allows for a unified decomposition of both coherent and incoherent target scattering. Based on this model, a unique and roll-invariant model can be developed for target decomposition. Our study aims at the investigation of the Touzi decomposition for lake and sea ice monitoring. Thus, we investigate the sensitivity of the target parameters obtained from the Touzi incoherent decomposition to modeled ice growth. Our study focuses on thermodynamically-grown fast lake and sea ice during the early ice growth. A time-series quad pol synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery was acquired over a study site around the Resolute Bay area. Results indicate that for lake ice, the scattering type magnitude () decreases within a thickness up to 20 cm. This means switching from volume scattering to dominant surface scattering. The same sensitivity is observed for young sea ice with thickness up to 30 cm, which corresponds to modeled ice bulk salinity of 8.5‰. Remarkably, we found a trend of increasing target orientation angle () for thin sea ice up to 20 cm, which corresponds to a bulk salinity of 10.3‰. This trend is unique to the case of sea ice.