Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms
Lakes cover a significant fraction of the landscape in many northern countries. They play a key role in regulating weather and climate and also have a significant impact on northern communities since the presence (or absence), extent and thickness of lake ice affect transportation (ice roads), food...
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2023
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ftunivwaterloo:oai:uwspace.uwaterloo.ca:10012/19071 2023-05-15T18:18:55+02:00 Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms Mugunthan, Jaya Sree 2023-01-11 http://hdl.handle.net/10012/19071 en eng University of Waterloo http://hdl.handle.net/10012/19071 lake ice classification waveform machine learning sentinel-3 ice cover inland water sar altimetry Master Thesis 2023 ftunivwaterloo 2023-01-21T23:57:35Z Lakes cover a significant fraction of the landscape in many northern countries. They play a key role in regulating weather and climate and also have a significant impact on northern communities since the presence (or absence), extent and thickness of lake ice affect transportation (ice roads), food availability, recreational activities, and tourism in wintertime. The drastic decline in in-situ observations of lake ice phenology (i.e., freeze-up and break-up dates and ice cover duration) and lake ice thickness globally over the last three decades make remote sensing technology a viable means for monitoring lake ice conditions. Although satellite radar altimetry has been used in various cryospheric and hydrological studies, little work has been conducted on lake ice compared to, for example, sea ice and the estimation of lake water levels. This study was carried out using Sentinel-3A/B SAR altimetry data acquired over three ice seasons (2018-2019, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021) at 11 large lakes across the Northern Hemisphere. We explored the information provided by radar waveforms to discriminate between open water, first (young) ice, growing ice and melting ice using machine learning models. To characterize the waveforms, seven waveform parameters were derived: Leading Edge Width (LEW), Offset Center of Gravity (OCOG) Width, Pulse Peakiness (PP), backscatter coefficient (Sigma0), late tail to peak power (LTTP), early tail to peak power (ETTP) and the maximum value of the echo power. Four machine learning algorithms including Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting Trees (GBT), K Nearest Neighbour (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers were tested to assess their capability in classifying the lake surfaces across all years. Manual class labelling based on Sentinel-3 Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL) waveforms and complementary satellite data (Sentinel-1 imaging SAR data, Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI) Level 1C data, and MODIS Aqua/Terra data) was performed to create training and test ... Master Thesis Sea ice University of Waterloo, Canada: Institutional Repository |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of Waterloo, Canada: Institutional Repository |
op_collection_id |
ftunivwaterloo |
language |
English |
topic |
lake ice classification waveform machine learning sentinel-3 ice cover inland water sar altimetry |
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lake ice classification waveform machine learning sentinel-3 ice cover inland water sar altimetry Mugunthan, Jaya Sree Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms |
topic_facet |
lake ice classification waveform machine learning sentinel-3 ice cover inland water sar altimetry |
description |
Lakes cover a significant fraction of the landscape in many northern countries. They play a key role in regulating weather and climate and also have a significant impact on northern communities since the presence (or absence), extent and thickness of lake ice affect transportation (ice roads), food availability, recreational activities, and tourism in wintertime. The drastic decline in in-situ observations of lake ice phenology (i.e., freeze-up and break-up dates and ice cover duration) and lake ice thickness globally over the last three decades make remote sensing technology a viable means for monitoring lake ice conditions. Although satellite radar altimetry has been used in various cryospheric and hydrological studies, little work has been conducted on lake ice compared to, for example, sea ice and the estimation of lake water levels. This study was carried out using Sentinel-3A/B SAR altimetry data acquired over three ice seasons (2018-2019, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021) at 11 large lakes across the Northern Hemisphere. We explored the information provided by radar waveforms to discriminate between open water, first (young) ice, growing ice and melting ice using machine learning models. To characterize the waveforms, seven waveform parameters were derived: Leading Edge Width (LEW), Offset Center of Gravity (OCOG) Width, Pulse Peakiness (PP), backscatter coefficient (Sigma0), late tail to peak power (LTTP), early tail to peak power (ETTP) and the maximum value of the echo power. Four machine learning algorithms including Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting Trees (GBT), K Nearest Neighbour (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers were tested to assess their capability in classifying the lake surfaces across all years. Manual class labelling based on Sentinel-3 Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL) waveforms and complementary satellite data (Sentinel-1 imaging SAR data, Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI) Level 1C data, and MODIS Aqua/Terra data) was performed to create training and test ... |
format |
Master Thesis |
author |
Mugunthan, Jaya Sree |
author_facet |
Mugunthan, Jaya Sree |
author_sort |
Mugunthan, Jaya Sree |
title |
Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms |
title_short |
Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms |
title_full |
Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms |
title_fullStr |
Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms |
title_full_unstemmed |
Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms for the Classification of Lake Ice and Open Water from Sentinel-3 SAR Altimetry Waveforms |
title_sort |
evaluation of machine learning algorithms for the classification of lake ice and open water from sentinel-3 sar altimetry waveforms |
publisher |
University of Waterloo |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/19071 |
genre |
Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Sea ice |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/19071 |
_version_ |
1766195678242930688 |