Application of a new polarimetric filter to RADARSAT-2 data of deception island (Antarctic peninsula region) for surface cover characterization

• Published in: The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
• Main Authors: Guillaso, S., Schmid, T., López-Martínez, J., D'Hondt, O.
• Other Authors: UAM. Departamento de Geología y Geoquímica
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2018
• Subjects: Antarctica; Geomorphology; Image interpretation; Polarimetry; SAR; Soils; Speckle Filtering; Surface characterization; Geología; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Canada; Deception Island; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10486/681709; https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-7-W3-1035-2015

In this paper, we describe a new approach to analyse and quantify land surface covers on Deception Island, a volcanic island located in the Northern Antarctic Peninsula region by means of fully polarimetric RADARSAT-2 (C-Band) SAR image. Data have been filtered by a new polarimetric speckle filter (PolSAR-BLF) that is based on the bilateral filter. This filter is locally adapted to the spatial structure of the image by relying on pixel similarities in both the spatial and the radiometric domains. Thereafter different polarimetric features have been extracted and selected before being geocoded. These polarimetric parameters serve as a basis for a supervised classification using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. Finally, a map of landform is generated based on the result of the SVM results. This work was supported by the RADARSAT-2 Science and Operational Applications Research Program (SOAR) from the Canadian Space Agency and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. Geospatial Services Inc., Canada, that provided satellite data through the SOAR–5169 project granted to the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. This is a contribution to the projects CTM2011-26372 and CTM2014-57119-R of the Spain National R&D National Plan