CHARACTERIZATION OF HAZARDOUS ICE USING RADARSAT-2 AND ICE PROFILING SONAR

摘要

Ice can pose a hazard for operations (e.g., transportation, shipping, surveillance, offshore oil and gas exploration) and for infrastructure (e.g., ports, pipelines, offshore structures). There is an increasing need for fine-scale characterization of hazardous ice conditions. This information is of interest to many stakeholders including industry and government agencies. Spaceborne SAR sensors are being used for near-real-time monitoring of the regional ice conditions. Satellite-derived sea ice information products typically rely on the interpretation of ice analysts, sometimes supported by semi-automated tools. However, validation of data products remains a challenge due to limited or no ground truth. Operated from subsurface moorings located below the sea ice canopy, the ULS instrumentation, consisting of the ASL Ice Profiling Sonar (IPS) and the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), provides accurate measurements of ice draft on a continuous basis and allow detailed characterization of potentially hazardous ice features, e.g., large keels, hummocky ice, multi-year ice, episodes of large internal ice pressures, and glacial ice. In this work, our objective was to calibrate and validate satellite-based ice data products using continuous measurements obtained from ULS instruments. We focused on the development of techniques to integrate high resolution polarimetric RADARSAT-2 imagery and corresponding ULS datasets to characterize hazardous ice. The results include paired satellite and ULS datasets; calibration and validation of algorithms for hazardous ice detection and satellite-based ice draft estimation.