Monitoring sea ice using polarimetric SAR data: results from Okhotsk and Lake Saroma experiments

The authors have acquired the ground truth data at Lake Saroma and its surrounding area since 1993 in order to collect data on regional sea ice in the Sea of Okhotsk. The data was acquired in 1998 by Polarimetric and Interferometric SAR (PI-SAR), the dual-frequency, fully polarimetric airborne SAR system jointly developed by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and the Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), simultaneously with ground experiments. This paper describes the results of polarimetric data analysis of typical sea ice observed in the off-shore region near Lake Saroma. The used polarimetric parameters were correlation coefficient and phase difference. Based on the analysis of these parameters, the authors found that the correlation coefficient between RR and LL polarizations has a capability to discriminate four categories including three types of ice and open water.