Application of SAR Polarimetry and its role in Arctic area

Knowledge of the hydrology of the Arctic region is incomplete due to the complexities of permafrost terrain, for difficulties in acquiring data in harsh environments and lack in routine monitoring on local and global scale. The spatial distribution of permafrost-vegetation interface in the Arctic is important to climate change of this region. Optical remote sensing data are currently used to identify permafrost-vegetation interface but are limited to cloud-free periods. For this reason not is always possible to monitoring the permafrost-vegetation interface in these areas with optical data. At present time, physical and technological aspects suggest that SAR polarimetry is much more reliable, in particular, SAR polarimetry delivers high spatial resolution, wide-area radar images at day and at night, and in almost all weather conditions. For this purpose, spaceborne fully polarimetric time-series datasets show great potential for mapping permafrost-vegetation interface with a sufficient level of precision. Our goal is to evaluate fully polarimetric Radarsat-2 (RS2) time-series datasets to identify the permafrost-vegetation interface dynamics.