Dual-Polarimetric SAR Imaging Modes to Monitor Lake Extent

Water ecosystems as oceans, lakes and rivers contribute significantly to global biodiversity, influence the ecological balance and play a remarkable role in different aspects of human society and economy. Therefore, the detection of changes associated to natural and human-induced water dynamics is of great importance for ecosystem preservation, disaster warnings and water conservation projects. To this aims, it is well established that satellite remote sensing tools represent an invaluable source of information.Under this framework, this study focuses on the analysis of dual-polarimetric C-band synthetic aperture radar imaging modes, including compact and linear ones, to extract lake waterline and, therefore, monitor the water-covered area. A reference waterline extraction scheme is adopted for this purpose, which is feed by polarimetric features associated to the two backscattering channels, namely δ and ρ for the compact polarimetric Radarsat Constellation Mission and the linear polarization Sentinel-1 mission. The Athabasca lake in Alberta, Canada, is selected as a meaningful test site. The experimental results show that the dual-polarimetric C-band synthetic aperture radar data can be effectively used to get lake extent information, with subtle differences that apply between RCM compact-polarimetric and Sentinel-1 linear polarization imaging modes.