Extracting icebergs freeboard from the shadows in Landsat-8 panchromatic images

Abstract: The iceberg freeboard is an important geometric parameter for measuring the thickness of the iceberg and then estimating its volume. Based on the fact that the iceberg can cast elongated shadow on the surface of sea ice in winter, this paper proposes a method to measure the iceberg freeboard using shadow length and the predefined or estimated solar elevation angle. Three Landsat-8 panchromatic images are selected to test our method, with center solar elevation angle of respectively 5.43°, 7.49°and 11.01° on August 29, September 7, and 16 September in 2016. Shadow lengths of five isolated tabular icebergs are automatically extracted to calculate the freeboard height. For the accuracy assessment, we use the matching points at the different time as cross validation. The results show that the measurement error of shadow length is less than one pixel. When the sun elevation angle is lower than 11.01°, the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the iceberg freeboard from the panchromatic 15 m image is less than 2.0 m, and the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) is less than 1.5 m. Such experiment shows that: under the angle of low solar elevation in winter, the landsat-8 panchromatic 15 m image can be used for high-precision measurement of the iceberg freeboard, and has the potential to measure the Antarctic iceberg freeboard in large scale.

Key words: Antarctic, icebergs, freeboard, shadow altimetry, Landsat-8