Where the White Continent Is Blue
Deep Learning Locates Bare Ice in Antarctica
Veronica Tollenaar (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
Harry Zekollari (ETH Zürich, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Frank Pattyn (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Marc Rußwurm (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Wageningen University & Research)
Benjamin Kellenberger (Yale University)
Stef Lhermitte (TU Delft - Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
M. Izeboud (TU Delft - Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning)
Devis Tuia (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
In some areas of Antarctica, blue-colored bare ice is exposed at the surface. These blue ice areas (BIAs) can trap meteorites or old ice and are vital for understanding the climatic history. By combining multi-sensor remote sensing data (MODIS, RADARSAT-2, and TanDEM-X) in a deep learning framework, we map blue ice across the continent at 200-m resolution. We use a novel methodology for image segmentation with “noisy” labels to learn an underlying “clean” pattern with a neural network. In total, BIAs cover ca. 140,000 km2 (∼1%) of Antarctica, of which nearly 50% located within 20 km of the grounding line. There, the low albedo of blue ice enhances melt-water production and its mapping is crucial for mass balance studies that determine the stability of the ice sheet. Moreover, the map provides input for fieldwork missions and can act as constraint for other geophysical mapping efforts.
help_outline