Automated sea ice classification using spaceborne polarimetric SAR data

Author

Scheuchl, B. ; Caves, R. ; Cumming, I. ; Staples, G.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., British Columbia Univ., Vancouver, BC, Canada

Volume

7

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

3117

Abstract

This paper discusses the capability of spaceborne polarimetric C-band SAR data for sea ice detection and classification. Unsupervised classification using polarimetric decomposition and the complex Wishart classifier was performed on SIR-C data acquired off the coast of Newfoundland in April 1994. The algorithm is used for sea ice applications for the first time, and appears promising. In addition to polarimetric classification, three of the measured features were found to have ice edge detection capability: HV-intensity, HH/VV-ratio and anisotropy. These features show a clear separation between sea ice and open water and simple thresholds can be applied

Keywords

edge detection; geophysical signal processing; image classification; oceanographic techniques; radar imaging; radar polarimetry; remote sensing by radar; sea ice; spaceborne radar; synthetic aperture radar; C-band; Newfoundland; North Atlantic; SAR; SHF; algorithm; complex Wishart classifier; edge detection; image classification; measurement technique; ocean; radar polarimetry; radar remote sensing; sea ice; spaceborne radar; synthetic aperture radar; Backscatter; Business; Electronic mail; Layout; Monitoring; Ocean temperature; Sea ice; Sea surface; Spaceborne radar; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2001. IGARSS '01. IEEE 2001 International

Conference_Location

Sydney, NSW

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7031-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2001.978275

Filename

978275