Monitoring extreme ice features using multi-resolution RADARSAT-2 data

Information on extreme ice features (ridges, icebergs etc.) is important for various marine operations. Satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is capable of monitoring sea ice, identifying and tracking ice features over broad spatial scales. This work investigates possibilities of extreme sea ice features retrieval from various RADARSAT-2 data. Several different beam modes and analysis techniques, such as polarimetric decompositions, were investigated. It was demonstrated that the spatial frequency of sea ice ridges has a very good correlation with the SAR backscatter coefficient. The problem of discriminating glacier ice from sea ice can be resolved by applying Pauli decomposition to full polarimetric data.