Observing rotation and deformation of sea ice with synthetic aperture radar

• Main Authors: Vesecky, J. F., Samadani, R., Daida, J. M., Smith, M. P., Bracewell, R. N.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 1987
• Subjects: 48; Pyramid; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19870065965

The ESA's ERS-1 satellite will carry SARs over the polar regions; an important component in the use of these data is an automated scheme for the extraction of sea ice velocity fields from a sequence of SAR images of the same geographical region. The image pyramid area-correlation hierarchical method is noted to be vulnerable to uncertainties for sea ice rotations greater than 10-15 deg between SAR observations. Rotation-invariant methods can successfully track isolated floes in the marginal ice zone. Hu's (1962) invariant moments are also worth considering as a possible basis for rotation-invariant tracking methods. Feature tracking is inherently robust for tracking rotating sea ice, but is limited when features are floe-lead boundaries. A variety of techniques appears neccessary.