View through ice

Abstract

Field investigations of the Malaspina Glacier, Alaska (Figure 1), were conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey in late September 1988, to examine areas of the glacier's surface which had produced unusual backscatter responses (see cover and Figure 2) on X‐band side‐looking airborne radar (SLAR). SLAR imagery of the Malaspina Glacier was collected for the USGS by INTERATechnologies, Inc., in November 1986, as part of a systematic program to produce radar image mosaics of the Yakutat, Mt. Fairweather, Mt. Saint Elias, Icy Bay, and Bering Glacier 1° × 2° quadrangles. These data are the first digitally acquired, X‐band, high‐resolution, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) of coastal, south central Alaska and the Malaspina Glacier. The Xband SLAR operates at a frequency of 9.6 GHz with a wavelength of 3.2 cm. The only other previously available, nonproprietary, SAR imagery of the Malaspina Glacier is much lower‐resolution, L‐band, SEASAT SAR, obtained in 1978. SEASAT operated at a frequency of 1.3 GHz with a wavelength of 23.5 cm. The resolution of SEASAT is about 25 m, while the SLAR data have a resolution of about 10 m. The backscatter features observed on the X‐band SLAR imagery are only poorly discernible on SEASAT data.