Role of Indian remote sensing imaging satellites for the Antarctic monitoring and mapping: a case study around Indian Antarctic research stations

Abstract

Antarctic research station’s existence largely depend on the supply of fuel, food and other commodities through Antarctic Scientific Expedition using ship voyage. Safer Ship Navigation demands high resolution satellite monitoring of the ice conditions which varies from 30 km to 200 km from the Antarctic coast of Research stations. During the last couple of years Indian Satellites play a major role in safer ship navigation in sea ice regions of the Arctic and the Antarctic. Specifically Indian Scientific Expedition to the Antarctica (ISEA) through National Centre for Antarctic and Oceanic Research (NCAOR) is one of the beneficiaries for safer ship navigation using information derived from Indian Satellite data. Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation (SAC-ISRO) is providing Sea Ice Advisories for the safer optimum entry and exit for the expedition ship at two of the Research stations Bharati and Maitri. Two of the Indian Satellites namely Radar Imaging Satellite-1 (RISAT-1) and ResourceSAT-2 (RS-2) are the two major workhorses of ISRO for monitoring and mapping of the Antarctic terrain. The present study demonstrate the utilisation potential of these satellite images for various Polar Science Applications. Mosaic of the Antarctic Terrain was generated from RISAT-1 CRS data. The preliminary results of the mosaic from CRS- circular polarisation data is presented. Demonstration of the study is extended for other applications such as change detection studies, safer ship navigation and extreme events of Antarctica. The use of multi resolution multi sensor data is also shown in the study.