Classification of Radar Zones on Selected Glaciers in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard
Vol.16,No.1(2026)
Glacier facies are characteristic properties of glaciers that are an observable and mappable determinant of their health. The occurrence and distribution of facies depend upon several contributing factors such as climatic shifts, sudden events, temperature, precipitation, overall deglaciation, etc. Seasonal variations of facies in one year and annual variations across several years are effective markers of seasonal and long-term glacial evolution. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) allows for efficient generation of seasonal data within multilayer composites which can be exploited for mapping facies. In this study, we utilized Sentinel-1 data to create seasonal composites from 2016-2023 and mapped facies of selected glaciers, in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. We utilized unsupervised classification to obtain facies maps in a data-centric approach. This involved modulating the number of output thematic classes across sets of 3, 5, and 7, as well as changing the spatial extent from multiple glaciers to a single glacier in the classification workflow. Thematic classification revealed mixed clusters across all years and polarizations. Our analysis suggests that seasonal variability of facies leads to mixed signals within a single pixel causing misclassification. Additionally, the spatial extent of the input data drives fluxes in thematic mapping, suggesting that changes in local and global raster statistics can limit spatial scale transferability of a mapping workflow. The present results place thematic classification of glacier facies into a practical context for future applications. Our upcoming experiments will include a longer time-series, various polarizations, and advanced information extraction methods, leading to improved understanding of the operational applications of seasonal SAR data for mapping glacier facies.
radar zones; glacier facies; ISODATA; thematic mapping; seasonal facies; glacial time series; spatiotemporal variations
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