Monitoring of thawing process using envisat asar global mode data

Due to the high temporal sampling rate of ASAR Global Monitoring mode, it has an application potential for analyzing seasonal changes in permafrost environment. The objective of the study is to develop a robust method for monitoring freeze/thaw cycles beyond threshold approaches. In order to use ASAR GM time-series for analyzing freeze/thaw states, a least square fitting of piecewise step function is introduced in this paper. An experiment result for Siberian permafrost area near Yakutsk illustrates that it can be a promising approach in monitoring permafrost ecosystems.