Evaluation of Polarimetric Configurations for Glacier Classification

Monitoring arctic glaciers is currently of high global importance for which satellite-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems are well suited because of their cloud penetrating ability and broad coverage. The scale of the monitoring problem means that reliable automated image classification schemes need to be developed. Fully polarimetric SAR imagery contains the most scattering information leading to the best classification results, however fully polarimetric satellite systems are few and still considered experimental and therefore this type of data is not readily available. For practical reasons too, the wider coverage of single or dual polarisation modes are often chosen for monitoring purposes. We investigate and compare the glacial classification ability of various polarimetric configurations, that correspond to commonly acquired dual and single channel SAR products.