X- and Ku-Band SAR Backscattering Signatures of Snow-Covered Lake Ice and Sea Ice

In this work, backscattering signatures of snow-covered lake ice and sea ice from X- and Ku-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are investigated. The SAR data were acquired with the ESA airborne SnowSAR sensor in winter 2012 over Lake Orajärvi in northern Finland and over landfast ice in the Ba...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote Sensing
Main Authors: Katriina Veijola, Juval Cohen, Marko Mäkynen, Juha Lemmetyinen, Jaan Praks, Bin Cheng
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024
Subjects:
remote sensing
synthetic aperture radar
sea ice
snow
Science
Q
Northern Finland
Sea ice
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16020369
https://doaj.org/article/8acda113c2cf450e9f44e28e8a79af94
Description
Summary:In this work, backscattering signatures of snow-covered lake ice and sea ice from X- and Ku-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are investigated. The SAR data were acquired with the ESA airborne SnowSAR sensor in winter 2012 over Lake Orajärvi in northern Finland and over landfast ice in the Bay of Bothnia of the Baltic Sea. Co-incident with the SnowSAR acquisitions, in situ snow and ice data were measured. In addition, time series of TerraSAR-X images and ice mass balance buoy data were acquired for Lake Orajärvi in 2011–2012. The main objective of our study was to investigate relationships between SAR backscattering signatures and snow depth over lake and sea ice, with the ultimate objective of assessing the feasibility of retrieval of snow characteristics using X- and Ku-band dual-polarization (VV and VH) SAR over freshwater or sea ice. This study constitutes the first comprehensive survey of snow backscattering signatures at these two combined frequencies over both lake and sea ice. For lake ice, we show that X-band VH-polarized backscattering coefficient ( <semantics> σ o </semantics> ) and the Ku-band VV/VH-ratio exhibited the highest sensitivity to the snow depth. For sea ice, the highest sensitivity to the snow depth was found from the Ku-band VV-polarized <semantics> σ o </semantics> and the Ku-band VV/VH-ratio. However, the observed relations were relatively weak, indicating that at least for the prevailing snow conditions, obtaining reliable estimates of snow depth over lake and sea ice would be challenging using only X- and Ku-band backscattering information.

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