Tenuous Correlation between Snow Depth or Sea Ice Thickness and C- or X-Band Backscattering in Nunavik Fjords of the Hudson Strait

• Published in: Remote Sensing
• Main Authors: Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour, Monique Bernier, Jérome Simon, Saeid Homayouni, Véronique Gilbert, Yves Gauthier, Juupi Tuniq, Anna Wendleder, Achim Roth
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021
• Subjects: sea ice; snow; remote sensing; synthetic aperture radar; Nunavik; Bayesian linear regression; Science; Q; Hudson; Hudson Strait; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040768; https://doaj.org/article/c4c8e88c77454f398b48b2e228db3d75

Radar penetration in brine-wetted snow-covered sea ice is almost nil, yet reports exist of a correlation between snow depth or ice thickness and SAR parameters. This article presents a description of snow depth and first-year sea ice thickness distributions in three fjords of the Hudson Strait and of their tenuous correlation with SAR backscattering in the C- and X-band. Snow depth and ice thickness were directly measured in three fjords of the Hudson Strait from 2015 to 2018 in April or May. Bayesian linear regression analysis was used to investigate their relationship with RADARSAT-2 (C-band) or TerraSAR-X (X-band). Polarimetric ratios and the Cloude–Pottier decomposition parameters were explored along with the HH, HV and VV bands. Linear correlations were generally no higher than 0.3 except for a special case in May 2018. The co-polarization ratio did not perform better than the backscattering coefficients.