Estimation of supraglacial debris thickness using a novel target decomposition on L‐band polarimetric SAR images in the Tianshan Mountains

Debris is widely distributed in the ablation zones of mountain glaciers in the Tianshan Mountains. Supraglacial debris can accelerate or hamper glacier ablation, depending on its thickness. Thus, it plays an important role in the mass balance of debris-covered glaciers. This paper proposes a novel method to estimate supraglacial debris thickness by using L-band polarimetric synthetic aperture radar. A new model-based target decomposition is used to extract the surface scattering, double bounce, and volume scattering components. The surface scatter model uses the extended Bragg scatter, which considers the depolarization effect for rough surfaces. The volume scatter model uses elliptical scatterers, which approximate the shape of the solids in the debris. The volume scattering power is related to the dielectric properties of the debris, the radar wavelength, the incidence angle, and the elliptical scatter shape. Once the target decomposition is performed, the debris thickness can be inverted from the volume scattering power and other known parameters. Through comparison with a large number of field measurements, the inversion is shown to be reasonable, and the accuracy is validated to be ±0.12 m. Based on the inversion map in the study area, the debris thicknesses of the Koxkar glacier and its neighboring glaciers are presented and analyzed.