Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier
ABSTRACT Despite their importance for mass-balance estimates and the progress in techniques based on optical and thermal satellite imagery, the mapping of debris-covered glacier boundaries remains a challenging task. Manual corrections hamper regular updates. In this study, we present an automatic a...
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Language: | English |
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Cambridge University Press (CUP)
2018
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jog.2018.70 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143018000709 |
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crcambridgeupr:10.1017/jog.2018.70 2024-09-15T18:15:39+00:00 Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier LIPPL, STEFAN VIJAY, SAURABH BRAUN, MATTHIAS 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jog.2018.70 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143018000709 en eng Cambridge University Press (CUP) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Journal of Glaciology volume 64, issue 247, page 811-821 ISSN 0022-1430 1727-5652 journal-article 2018 crcambridgeupr https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2018.70 2024-09-04T04:04:42Z ABSTRACT Despite their importance for mass-balance estimates and the progress in techniques based on optical and thermal satellite imagery, the mapping of debris-covered glacier boundaries remains a challenging task. Manual corrections hamper regular updates. In this study, we present an automatic approach to delineate glacier outlines using interferometrically derived synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) coherence, slope and morphological operations. InSAR coherence detects the temporally decorrelated surface (e.g. glacial extent) irrespective of its surface type and separates it from the highly coherent surrounding areas. We tested the impact of different processing settings, for example resolution, coherence window size and topographic phase removal, on the quality of the generated outlines. We found minor influence of the topographic phase, but a combination of strong multi-looking during interferogram generation and additional averaging during coherence estimation strongly deteriorated the coherence at the glacier edges. We analysed the performance of X-, C- and L- band radar data. The C-band Sentinel-1 data outlined the glacier boundary with the least misclassifications and a type II error of 0.47 % compared with Global Land Ice Measurements from Space inventory data. Our study shows the potential of the Sentinel-1 mission together with our automatic processing chain to provide regular updates for land-terminating glaciers on a large scale. Article in Journal/Newspaper Journal of Glaciology Cambridge University Press Journal of Glaciology 64 247 811 821 |
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Open Polar |
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Cambridge University Press |
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crcambridgeupr |
language |
English |
description |
ABSTRACT Despite their importance for mass-balance estimates and the progress in techniques based on optical and thermal satellite imagery, the mapping of debris-covered glacier boundaries remains a challenging task. Manual corrections hamper regular updates. In this study, we present an automatic approach to delineate glacier outlines using interferometrically derived synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) coherence, slope and morphological operations. InSAR coherence detects the temporally decorrelated surface (e.g. glacial extent) irrespective of its surface type and separates it from the highly coherent surrounding areas. We tested the impact of different processing settings, for example resolution, coherence window size and topographic phase removal, on the quality of the generated outlines. We found minor influence of the topographic phase, but a combination of strong multi-looking during interferogram generation and additional averaging during coherence estimation strongly deteriorated the coherence at the glacier edges. We analysed the performance of X-, C- and L- band radar data. The C-band Sentinel-1 data outlined the glacier boundary with the least misclassifications and a type II error of 0.47 % compared with Global Land Ice Measurements from Space inventory data. Our study shows the potential of the Sentinel-1 mission together with our automatic processing chain to provide regular updates for land-terminating glaciers on a large scale. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
LIPPL, STEFAN VIJAY, SAURABH BRAUN, MATTHIAS |
spellingShingle |
LIPPL, STEFAN VIJAY, SAURABH BRAUN, MATTHIAS Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier |
author_facet |
LIPPL, STEFAN VIJAY, SAURABH BRAUN, MATTHIAS |
author_sort |
LIPPL, STEFAN |
title |
Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier |
title_short |
Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier |
title_full |
Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier |
title_fullStr |
Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier |
title_full_unstemmed |
Automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using InSAR coherence derived from X-, C- and L-band radar data: a case study of Yazgyl Glacier |
title_sort |
automatic delineation of debris-covered glaciers using insar coherence derived from x-, c- and l-band radar data: a case study of yazgyl glacier |
publisher |
Cambridge University Press (CUP) |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jog.2018.70 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143018000709 |
genre |
Journal of Glaciology |
genre_facet |
Journal of Glaciology |
op_source |
Journal of Glaciology volume 64, issue 247, page 811-821 ISSN 0022-1430 1727-5652 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2018.70 |
container_title |
Journal of Glaciology |
container_volume |
64 |
container_issue |
247 |
container_start_page |
811 |
op_container_end_page |
821 |
_version_ |
1810453585038671872 |