EXTRACTION OF ICE FLOW VELOCITY BY COMBINATION OF DINSAR AND OFFSET TRACKING METHODS FOR PINE GLACIER, WEST ANTARCTICA

Abstract

West Antarctica is the main contributor to global sea level rise at present and in the coming decades, since it occupies 80% of mass loss in Antarctica. In this paper, a combination of Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) and offset tracking technology is used to extract the ice flow velocity of the Pine Island Glacier (PIG), a typical glacier in West Antarctica. Due to the large deformation gradients in PIG, DInSAR technology is used to extract ice flow velocity in bare rock and mountains, then offset tracking technology is used to extract ice flow velocity in areas where glaciers collapse frequently. Finally, the above two results are mosaiced into a new image of the interannual ice flow velocity of PIG in 2017. Through qualitative and quantitative evaluation, it is found that the ice flow velocity extracted by the combination has high accuracy in both high and low velocity areas. In summary, we concluded that the combination of DInSAR and Offset tracking can obtain reliable ice velocity products in glaciers that change rapidly. This combination is of scientific significance for monitoring the movement and evolution of glaciers in the West Antarctica.