We present a new approach for incorporating incidence angle derived synthetic aperture radar (SAR) brightness variation directly into SAR image analysis. This approach is unique in that the incidence angle dependency is modeled explicitly into the probability density function rather than an image-wide pre-processing ‘correction’. It can then be used for supervised and unsupervised image analysis, ...

<p>SAR images display a characteristic intensity variation along the range dimension, caused by the fact that the backscattered intensities depend on the incidence angle. In the case of wide-swath images, this intensity variation from near range to far range is significant enough to affect image segmentation performed on absolute intensity values. The effects are an over-segmentation which creates ...

The Arctic icescape is rapidly transforming from a thicker multiyear ice cover to a thinner and largely seasonal first-year ice cover with significant consequences for Arctic primary production. One critical challenge is to understand how productivity will change within the next decades. Recent studies have reported extensive phytoplankton blooms beneath ponded sea ice during summer, indicating ...

This letter presents a new general framework for solving polarimetric target decompositions that extends them to use more statistical information and include radar texture models. Polarimetric target decomposition methods generally have more physical parameters than equations and are, thus, underdetermined and have no unique solution. The common approach to solve them is to make certain assumptions, ...

Our aim is to use unsupervised, non-Gaussian clustering of Arctic glaciers for post-classification change detection. Firstly, we demonstrate the consistency of non-Gaussian clustering algorithms for Envisat ASAR images by characterizing the expected random error level for different SAR acquisition conditions (such as incidence angle). This allows us to determine whether an observed variation is ...

This thesis describes general methods to analyse polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images, with the primary application of unsupervised image segmentation. The fundamental physics of electromagnetic scattering from distributed targets leads to the image phenomenon called speckle. Speckle is shown to be potentially non-Gaussian and several statistical distributions are investigated. Non-Gaussianity ...

In this paper, a 2-dimensional scattering model for sea ice based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) is presented. The scattering problem is formulated following a physics-separate strategy. The wave in the air domain is expressed by the scattered field formulation, while the wave in the sea ice domain is expressed by the total field formulation. The two separate physics and formulations are coupled ...

Research on young thin sea ice is essential to understand the changes in the Arctic. But it is also the most challenging to investigate, both in situ and from satellites. If satellite remote sensing techniques are developing rapidly, fieldwork remains crucial for the mandatory validation of such data. In April 2016, an Arctic fieldwork campaign was conducted at Kongsfjorden, Svalbard. This campaign ...