Feasibility of Snow Avalanche Volume Retrieval by GB-SAR Imagery

Author

Martinez-Vazquez, Alberto ; Fortuny-Guasch, Joaquim

Author_Institution

DG Joint Res. Centre, Eur. Comm. Ispra, Ispra

fYear

2006

fDate

July 31 2006-Aug. 4 2006

Firstpage

743

Lastpage

746

Abstract

The feasibility to estimate the volume of snow displaced in an avalanche by means of the LISA (Linear SAR) ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR) system has been investigated. During more than 100 days of the winter 2005- 2006 the system has acquired data in its topographic mode, being able to monitor near 50 natural avalanches and 4 artificially triggered. With an acquisition rate of one image every 12 minutes, the LISA instrument has shown its ability to monitor localized changes of the snow cover. The resolution in height of the topographic maps generated has been found to be inadequate to estimate the snow volume involved in the avalanches studied.

Keywords

digital elevation models; erosion; radar interferometry; remote sensing by radar; snow; synthetic aperture radar; topography (Earth); AD 2005 to 2006; GB-SAR imagery; LISA; Linear SAR; ground-based synthetic aperture radar; snow avalanche volume retrieval; snow cover; topography; Coherence; Image retrieval; Instruments; Interferometry; Monitoring; Permittivity; Snow; Spaceborne radar; Synthetic aperture radar; Transmitting antennas;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2006. IGARSS 2006. IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9510-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2006.191

Filename

4241338