Low backscatter signatures in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery are characteristic to surfaces that are highly smooth and specular reflective of microwave radiation. In the Arctic, these typically represent newly formed sea ice, oil spills, and localized weather phenomena such as low wind or rain cells. The operational monitoring of low backscatter targets can benefit from a stronger integration ...

We present a new approach for incorporating incidence angle derived synthetic aperture radar (SAR) brightness variation directly into SAR image analysis. This approach is unique in that the incidence angle dependency is modeled explicitly into the probability density function rather than an image-wide pre-processing `correction'. It can then be used for supervised and unsupervised image analysis, ...

Synthetic aperture radar systems perform signal acquisition under varying incidence angles and register an implicit intensity decay from near to far range. Owing to the geometrical interaction between microwaves and the imaged targets, the rates at which intensities decay depend on the nature of the targets, thus rendering single-rate image correction approaches only partially successful. The decay, ...

Increased human presence and commercial activities in the Barents Sea (fishing, offshore oil and gas exploration) are amplifying the need for large-scale operational ocean monitoring of the eventual oil spills in the region. The geographical location and climate impose additional constraints on satellite-based monitoring, making it necessary to use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). Dark features or ...