Monitoring the dynamics of ice shelf margins in Polar Regions with high-spatial- and high-temporal-resolution space-borne optical imagery

We report the new satellite data of Polar Regions collected by Formosat-2 during the recent Polar Imaging Campaign (March 2006–September 2007). Formosat-2 is the first satellite with a high-spatial-resolution (2 m) sensor placed in a daily revisit orbit. Together with its agility of pointing ± 45° both across and along track, we are able to acquire the optical imagery with 2 m resolution at any place in Polar Regions everyday. We demonstrate its applications with regard to observing the sea ice condition, monitoring the daily changes in ice shelves, and tracking floating ice with sizes of tens of meters for ten consecutive days from 3/24/2006 to 4/2/2006 in the vicinity of Alert, Canada. We successfully track the dramatic movement of ice floes during the breaking-up and refreezing event near the main flaw lead, with the velocity as high as 5 km/day. The results indicate that high-spatial- and high-temporal-resolution optical imagery taken from Formosat-2 could be a very useful data source with immediate impact on the research of Polar Regions.