Combining Optical and SAR Data to Monitor Temperate Glaciers

International audienceMonitoring temperate glaciers activity becomes more and more necessary for economical and security reasons and as an indicator of the local effects of global changes. This paper presents the beginning of a three year project which regroups four laboratories to develop and combine specific methods to extract information from optical and radar remote sensing data. Preliminary results are presented on three different information sources: airborne photography, space-borne multi-spectral images and SAR interferometry, which respectively allow the compution of high resolution DTM, the detection of glacial lakes and the measurement of glacier surface velocity. Results obtained on two glaciers located in the French Alps are compared and validated with ground measurments