Draft last revised 6/17/97
Fig. 1. SLR-2 swaths across Patagonian Ice Fields
Fig. 2. Index map of study areas
The NASA Spaceborne Radar Laboratory (SRL) missions aboard the shuttle Endeavor during April and October, 1994 (SRL-1 and SLR-2) obtained unprecedented and uniquely powerful new radar data for the Patagonian icefields with the SIR-C/X-SAR instrument. Fig. 1 shows the dense set of orbital tracks crossing the entire North Patagonian Icefield and the northern part of the South Patagonian Icefield.
Figure 1. Map showing orbit paths (red lines) for SIR-C/X-SAR during SLR-1 (April, 1994). The blue areas are the ice fields and glaciers.
The coverage for SLR-2 in October, 1994 was similar, yielding successive images of many parts of the ice fields over a seasonal period of six months from Southern Hemisphere Fall (SLR-1) to Spring (SLR-2). Within each mission successive images of parts of the icefields were obtained over periods of days.
The Cornell project took advantage of this opportunity for extensive imaging of these remote and poorly known icefields which, in addition to extremely difficult ground access, are largely hidden from satellite viewing with conventional visible and near-infrared images by perennial cloud cover. The mid-latitude, temperate icefields are among the largest ice masses on earth outside the Greenland and Antarctic icesheets, and are among the most dynamic in respect to their rates of ablation, accumulation and glacier velocities (e.g. see Warren and Sugden,1993). .
This report summarizes a series of papers published or in preparation for publication on the Patagonian Icefields based primarily on data from the SIR-C/X-SAR system but supplemented by C-band SAR data from the European Space Agency's Earth Resources Satellites (ERS-1 and ERS-2). The report is divided into three sections that cover (1) surface properties determined by analysis of multi-component backscatter amplitudes, (2) glacier topography and velocity determined by radar interferometry, and (3) termini changes estimated by analyses of multi-temporal SAR images. Fig. 2 below shows the main areas of the Patagonian Icefields discussed in this report.
Figure 2. Map showing the areas discussed in this report. Area A (green) is the focus of the studies of glacier radar zones, and is shown in more detail in Fig. 3. Areas B and C (red) include regions where interferometric SAR (InSAR) has been applied to determine glacier topography and velocity.
