Audrey Martini

Multi-frequency polarimetric snow discrimination in Alpine areas

This paper presents a new method to map dry snow in Alpine areas. A supervised discrimination algorithm, based on polarimetric contrast, is proposed to enhance multi-temporal and/or multi-frequency polarimetric behavior variations over snow-covered areas. This technique is shown to be more robust with respect to topography and underlying media diversity than classical contrast enhancement approaches. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated using SIR-C L and C-band polarimetric data sets

Polarimetric study of scattering from dry snow cover in alpine areas

This paper introduces a qualitative characterization of dry snow scattering behaviour in Alpine areas. An electromagnetic scattering model is developed, based on the vector radiative transfer equation, to simulate the fully polarimetric response of a snow cover. Multi-temporal and multi-frequency polarimetric SAR data acquired over Alpine test sites are analyzed by comparing polarimetric indicators to simulated ones with various sets of snow cover characteristics.