Comparison of different methods in glacier snow line detection using the polarimetric SAR image

Mountain glaciers and ice caps are often excellent indicators of regional climate change. The surface of a glacier can be roughly divided into accumulation and ablation areas, separated by the equilibrium line where accumulation is exactly equal to ablation. However, it is not easy to be detected on SAR image in glacial areas. The boundary between wet snow and ice is defined as the transient snow line (TSL). At the end of the ablation period, the transient snow line is often interpreted as an approximation of the equilibrium line, which is of special interest for the monitoring of climatic variations and glacier mass balance studies. In this paper, three methods to calculate the snow line altitude in late summer are introduced, and their accuracy and characteristics are analyzed.