Masters Thesis Abstract: Nita Smith
The velocity field of the Darwin-Hatherton glacial system from remote sensing
The Darwin-Hatherton outlet glacial system drains the East Antarctic Ice Sheet into the Ross Ice Shelf . Currently there is little knowledge about the recent change and the glacial processes in outlet glaciers. The understanding of this system is important in order to refine the current state of knowledge about the rate and impact of grounding line retreat in the Ross Sea embayment, which is an important process that directly affects the future stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (Conway et al., 1999).
My masters research fits into a wider research program being run by the University of Canterbury entitled, Dynamics and Change of the Darwin-Hatherton Glacial System, which is researching a number of different aspects of the Darwin-Hatherton area. This is in order to better constrain glaciological parameters which can then be used in numerical models to produce future mass balance predictions with a higher certainty than previous research.
The aim of my research is to: establish the velocity field of the Darwin-Hatherton glacial system using remote sensing techniques. The technique to be used is feature tracking, which identifies a pattern of pixels in one satellite image and attempts to match them to the same/similar pattern in the next image. There are a number of steps involved in order to undertake feature tracking.
- Choose images that will provide good spatial coverage of the area from two different times. Acquire images through GLIMS
- Create a DEM using ERDAS Imagine 9.1, Leticia Photogrammetry Suite.
- Geocode the images by removing topographic distortion with the DEM and give every pixel a latitude, longitude and elevation.
- Co-register images
- Apply filters to reduce noise
- Apply feature tracking cross correlation algorithm (IMCORR)
- Calculate velocities and test accuracy of algorithm.
- Create velocity contour map and compare to previous research.