Motion of David Glacier in East Antarctica Observed by

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Motion of David Glacier in East Antarctica
Observed by COSMO-SkyMED Differential SAR
Interferometry
Hyangsun Han and Hoonyol Lee Department of
Geophysics, Kangwon National University, Republic
of Korea hyangsun_at_kangwon.ac.kr,
hoonyol_at_kangwon.ac.kr
Abstract Monitoring motion of glacier is
necessary to investigate the ice mass balance,
polar ice discharge, and the effect of polar ice
to climate change. Differential SAR
Interferometry (DInSAR) has been widely used to
detect glacier motion. In this study, we
extracted a surface displacement map of David
glacier by applying DInSAR to one-day tandem
pairs obtained from COSMO-SkyMED satellites.
Terra ASTER global digital elevation model (GDEM)
is used to remove the topographic effect from the
COSMO-SkyMED interferograms. The glacier showed
very fast motion forming a block of streamlines
with different flow velocity. For more accurate
analysis, we will use TanDEM-X DEM to perform the
DInSAR. The flow characteristics, ice mass
balance, ice discharge rate of David glacier
remains as an ongoing research.
Displacement Map
0 m
LOS Displacement
Range
-1.0 m
Range
-0.3 m
Azimuth
0 m
Azimuth
LOS Displacement
LOS Displacement
COSMO-SkyMED Interferograms
Range
Azimuth
0.6 m
0.8 m
(a)
(b)
(c)
Date (yyyy/mm/dd) Orbit Incidence angle Baseline (perpendicular)
(a) 2011/04/28 2011/04/29 descending 40.0 98.6 m
(b) 2011/05/05 2011/05/06 ascending 40.0 120.1 m
(c) 2011/09/07 2011/09/08 descending 37.7 32.1 m
(d) 2011/09/17 2011/09/18 descending 37.7 50.0 m
(e) 2011/10/07 2011/10/08 ascending 35.8 92.3 m
0.8 m
LOS Displacement
-0.4 m
Range
0 m
Azimuth
LOS Displacement
0.8 m
Range
Azimuth
(d)
(e)
Fig. 1. COSMO-SkyMED one-day interferograms of
David glacier, East Antarctica (7520'S,
16115'E). David glacier is an outlet glacier of
13 km width near the grounding line and 50 km
long from the source to the grounding line. David
glacier flows into Ross Sea forming Drygalski Ice
Tongue, 100 km long and 23 km wide.
Fig. 2. The maps of surface displacement of David
glacier toward the line of sight (LOS) of radar
extracted form phase unwrapped differential
interferograms of (a) April, (b) May, (c and d)
September and (e) October, 2011. The glacier
showed very fast motion forming a block of
streamlines with different flow velocity.