ABSTRACT
Chapter 12 involves the potential of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) application to monitor the ice flow variation of Antarctic glaciers. The SAR systems have proven to be potentially useful for earth surface process monitoring. The present study attempts to estimate glacier surface flow of two East Antarctic glaciers, Potsdam Glacier and Polar Record Glacier (PRG), using recent Sentinel-1 SAR data. The East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS) is considered one of the largest reservoirs of fresh water on earth and is capable of raising sea level by ~50 m. To estimate the glacier surface velocity, two remote sensing based techniques were used in this study. The DInSAR method was implemented on Sentinel-1 SLC data to estimate glacier flow of Potsdam Glacier, while the offset tracking method was implemented on Sentinel GRD data to robustly determine the relatively faster glacier flow of PRG. The observed mean glacier flow velocity for Potsdam Glacier is 93.44 m/a. Similarly, offset tracking based estimates were presented for PRG where displacements of large magnitude were expected. High velocities were observed during the end of the austral summer month of the year 2020. The spatial distribution of flow velocity over the glacier surface ranges from 71.5 m/a to 985.5 m/a. The estimated average glacier flow velocity of PRG was 692.08 m/a, which is near to maximum velocities reported earlier for PRG.
