The Earth needs attention. That is the bottom line of today’s discussion on the impact of humans on the environment and their contribution to global warming. With the rapid sea level rise and the melting ice caps, it is becoming increasingly important to understand these processes. Mass balance estimates of the cryosphere (e.g. Greenland and Antarctica) are one of the keys to unlocking the secrets of today’s concerns and predicting tomorrow’s problems. The primary objective of this research is to construct an automatic classification algorithm to that will distinguish between the polar land cover types: ice, rock, snow and water. The algorithm is based on full waveform laser altimetry measurements gathered by the Ice, Cloud and Elevation Satellite (ICESat). The results of this research have the potential to play an important role in improving the current methods for computing mass balance estimates and monitoring seasonal changes in land cover type of the cryosphere.