Cryospheric and Polar Processes Seminar

SAR Remote Sensing for Monitoring Mountain Glacier Surface Movements in High Mountain Asia by
Zhixing Ruan, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

She is a visitor at NSIDC for the 2017-2018 school year, working with NSIDC’s glaciologist Bruce Raup

Abstract: 

Mountain glacier dynamic parameters, such as velocity fields and motion patterns, are important for studies of environment and climate change in high mountain Asia. Characterized by being independent of cloud cover and solar illumination, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) operating at long wavelength has provided an invaluable way to detect and measure mountain glacier motion. However, the traditional algorithms applied to mountain glacier regions are constrained by the complex terrain and diverse glacial motion types. In order to derive glacier velocities continually and efficiently, we propose a modified processing strategy to exploit SAR data information for mountain glaciers. In my presentation, I will introduce our improved algorithms for compensating non-glacial-motion-related signals which exist in the offset values retrieved by sub-pixel cross-correlation of SAR image pairs. I will also present some study cases of glacier motion changes based on our algorithms, such as West Kunlun Mountain, Muztag Mountain and Kungay Mountain in western China.