Feasibility of Snow Avalanche Volume Retrieval by GB-SAR Imagery

The feasibility to estimate the volume of snow displaced in an avalanche by means of the LISA (Linear SAR) ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR) system has been investigated. During more than 100 days of the winter 2005- 2006 the system has acquired data in its topographic mode, being able to monitor near 50 natural avalanches and 4 artificially triggered. With an acquisition rate of one image every 12 minutes, the LISA instrument has shown its ability to monitor localized changes of the snow cover. The resolution in height of the topographic maps generated has been found to be inadequate to estimate the snow volume involved in the avalanches studied.