OBSERVING THE ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET USING THE RADARSAT-1 SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR

摘要

This paper discusses the RADARSAT-1 Antarctic Mapping Project (RAMP). RAMP is a collaboration between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to map Antarctica using the RADARSAT -1 synthetic aperture radar. The project was conducted in two parts. The first part, which had the data acquisition phase in 1997, resulted in the first high-resolution radar map of Antarctica. The second part, which occurred in 2000, remapped the continent below 80°S Latitude and is now using interfer-ometric repeat-pass observations to compute glacier surface velocities. Project goals and objectives are reviewed here along with several science highlights. These highlights include observations of ice sheet margin change using both RAMP and historical data sets and the derivation of surface velocities on an East Antarctic outlet glacier using interferometric data collected in 2000.