Iceberg detection using full-polarimetric RADARSAT-2 SAR data in west antarctica

In this study, detection of icebergs that have broken off from Wilkinson glacier in West Antarctica is carried out by extracting various polarimetric parameters from high resolution C-band fully polarimetric RADARSAT-2 SAR data. In the unsupervised H/A/alpha classification result, some of the icebergs (unclassified) in the SAR image with similar intensity of volume and surface scattering were classified as sea ice whereas most of the icebergs were correctly classified due to their dominant volume scattering. Although the average of polarimetric parameters extracted from unclassified icebergs and sea ice represented similar intensity measurements, [1-H][1-A] showed a statistical distribution result that clearly distinguishes between unclassified icebergs and sea ice. This shows that [1-H][1-A] can be an effective parameter in detecting icebergs.