mcnc Lake and River Ice Investigations in Northern Manitoba Using Airborne

• Main Authors: S A R Imagery, Robert Leconte, P. David Klassen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1991
• Subjects: Burntwood River; Arctic; Split Lake
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.575.7674; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic44-S-153.pdf

flights, several reconnaissance helicopter flights were undertaken, and ground calibration sites were visited to collect ice, snow, and water data. A total of six SAR image passes were flown in April 1989 and seven in January 1990, in order to collect a data set with numerous incidence angle, fre-quency, polarization, and look direction combinations. The data have been qualitatively assessed, with specific emphasis on C-band horizontally polarized imagery- the proposed SAR configuration for Radarsat. Results of the analysis have shown that airborne SAR can be used to identify various freshwater ice features, such as juxtaposition ice, refrozen slush, river ice runs, and lake ice. Open water leads were also successfully identi-fied. A careful interpretation of the airborne SAR imagery in conjunction with the ground truth data has shown that the unusually bright returns char-acterizing the Burntwood River and the west portion of Split Lake were caused by a layer of refrozen slush that was generated during the initial for-mation of the ice cover. Although the results reported here focused exclusively on a qualitative analysis of C-HH data, preliminary analysis of the digital data suggests that changes in frequency and polarization produce measurable differences and can be used to develop classification algorithms for freshwater ice. Key words: synthetic aperture radar, fresh water ice &SUM&. En avril 1989 et janvier 1990, on a recueilli des donnks B l’aide d’un radar multicanal il antenne synthttique atroportt, au-dessus du nord du Manitoba. Au cours de la semaine des vols du radar B antenne synthttique, on a effectut plusieurs vols de reconnaissance n hklicoptkre, et visit6 plusieurs sites terrestres d’ttalonnage pour collecter des donntes sur la glace, la neige et I’eau. On a effectu6 au total six prises d’images en vol avec