On the Interpretation of L- and P-band Polsar Signatures of Polythermal Glaciers

Long-wavelength SAR backscattering from glacier ice is of high relevance for glaciological applications since it contains information about both surface and subsurface structure of the ice. For this reason, SAR sensors can be used to discriminate and delineate the different glacier facies and to extract information on the ice density, which today can only be estimated on point basis. In this paper, the authors focus on the modeling of polarimetric SAR (Pol-SAR) signatures of the percolation zone of the Austfonna ice cap, in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway. Incidence angle and frequency dependencies are deeply investigated and included in the model. A first assessment of the proposed model is finally performed by comparison with Land P-band airborne Pol-SAR data collected by DLR’s E-SAR system over the selected test site in 2007, during the ICESAR campaign.