Remote sensing of glacier by ground-based radar interferometry

The Belvedere Glacier, east face of Monte Rosa, has been investigated for many decades because of a long history of outburst threatening the village of Macugnaga and, in the latest years, a surge-type evolution, responsible for the formation of a large depression at the foot of the east wall of Monte Rosa, which hosted a supraglacial lake named "Lago Effimero" in summer 2002. In this contribution, a Ground Based SAR (GB-SAR) interferometer was employed for determining the ice-flow velocity of the illuminated part of the Belvedere Glacier in order to enhance the understanding of ice flow mechanics and hopefully reduce the glacier hazard. The deformation field and the velocities measured by the GB-SAR sensor have been validated with data by more conventional ground-based measurements.