Improved multi-scale image matching approach for monitoring Amery ice shelf velocity using Landsat 8

The velocity of an ice shelf is an important characteristic to understand its dynamics and interaction with the internal ice sheet. Therefore, we develop an improved multi-scale image matching method for producing a complete and accurate Amery ice shelf velocity field from Landsat 8 images. First, w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European Journal of Remote Sensing
Main Authors: Ze Yang, Zhizhong Kang, Xiao Cheng, Juntao Yang
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1080/22797254.2018.1556073
https://doaj.org/article/5def4041a6ce4acaabee16323484b2ad
Description
Summary:The velocity of an ice shelf is an important characteristic to understand its dynamics and interaction with the internal ice sheet. Therefore, we develop an improved multi-scale image matching method for producing a complete and accurate Amery ice shelf velocity field from Landsat 8 images. First, we investigate the relationship between the template size and the image entropy and propose an image entropy-based preliminary operation for distinguishing the high-contrast regions from the low-contrast regions prior to iteratively determining the optimum template size. Second, a Gaussian pyramid image-based hierarchical data structure is designed to support a coarse-to-fine image matching strategy.The image entropy-based matching method is applied on the top layer of the image pyramid to guarantee the matching results have optimal completeness and high accuracy. Finally, a postprocess procedure is performed to derive a complete and accurate Amery ice shelf velocity field. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly improve computational efficiency. Moreover, the proposed method provides more accurate and robust matching results than other existing methods, particularly over the low-contrast surfaces. Additionally, the derived velocity field also shows good consistency with the one acquired from MEaSUREs Annual Antarctic Ice Velocity Maps 2016–2017.