Estimating Shirase Glacier outflow using aster DEM and PALSAR data

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is mounted on Terra satellite. ASTER has the stereoscopic image sensor views nadir and backward in the same orbit, which allows us to generate digital elevation model (DEM) in a single path observation. The ASTER DEM is useful for detecting the grounding line (GL) without losing a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry coherence over the ice sheet and glacier area. The GL can be identified from the height transition of innermost ice tongue to the ice streams. This study presents the GL location and ice thickness for Shirase Glacier obtained using the ASTER DEM, and also detailed ice flow vectors obtained using the SAR amplitude image correlation. The image correlation allows us to estimate ice flow vector for the phased array type L-band SAR (PALSAR) data obtained by Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). We calculate the Shirase Glacier ice discharge through the estimated GL using the ice thickness and flow velocity, obtained in this study. The computed ice discharge was compared with results from previous studies.