Monitoring freeze/thaw cycles using ENVISAT ASAR Global Mode

• Published in: Remote Sensing of Environment
• Main Authors: Park, Sang-Eun, Bartsch, Annett, Sabel, Daniel, Wagner, Wolfgang, Naeimi, Vahid, Yamaguchi, Yoshio
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2011
• Subjects: Landoberfläche; Asar; permafrost
• Online Access: https://elib.dlr.de/77938/; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425711002914

Due to the high temporal sampling rate of ASAR Global Monitoring (GM) mode, it has a high application potential for analyzing the land surface freeze/thaw process in high latitudes. This study aims to develop effective methods of extracting freeze/thaw transition dates of permafrost areas from ASAR GM data sets. In order to use ASAR GM time-series for analyzing freeze/thaw states, a least square fitting of piecewise step function is introduced. The thawing date can be determined by minimizing the sum of squared residuals between measured backscattering time-series and a pre-defined step function. An experimental result for a Siberian permafrost region illustrates that it can be a promising approach in monitoring permafrostecosystems.