Monitoring of tundra lakes with C-band and L-band SAR data

Abstract

The final goal of this research is to evaluate an effect of Arctic climate change into surrounding land area. In this research, we will develop a method to monitor freezing and thawing of tundra lakes in Arctic region with C-band and L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, and give a strategy to evaluate the effect of climate change to Arctic land area. The method to monitor the lake ice of tundra lakes was investigated by using SAR data acquired by ers-1, ENVISAT, and ALOS. We found that the increase of backscattering coefficients with ice growth for typical floating ice in 2008 was slower than that in 1992, which was probably caused by the decrease of accumulated freezing index in 2008. We also indicated a possibility to detect the change of backscattering mechanisms for growing and thawing lake ice by using L-band fully polarimetric SAR data acquired in 2009. In our further research, we will evaluate a time series of C-band and L-band backscattering coefficients of tundra lakes in Alaska and Siberia for long period of time by using the archived and future available SAR data.