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This paper presents a method for determination of glacial zone using radar images. Monitoring of glacial zones is one of the method for observing clime changes. ERS SAR and full polarimetric Lband ALOS PALSAR data from May 2009 have been used for mapping ice facies on ice-cap Vestfonna in north-eastern part of Svalbard Archipelago. In the same time GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) measurements were conducted. For detection of ice facies, polarimetric decomposition and the complex Wishart classifier were applied on ALOS PALSAR data. Next unsupervised classification was made on radar amplitude images and components of PCA (Principal Component Analysis) of ALOS data. Also unsupervised classification of ERS SAR data was made. Obtained results were validated using GPR profile from field campaign and compared with optical images ASTER and Landsat as well. Preliminary results presented here are based on visual analysis and are found satisfactory. Observations show that both, C-band ERS SAR with single polarization as well as fully polarimetric L-band Alos Palsar data are useful for glacier zones determination and complement one another. When comparing results of segmentation and classification with GPR it is seen, that there is better discrimination between of ice zone and ice covered with young firn (1-3 seasons) on ERS SAR. That is probably the result of shorter wavelength of C-band of ERS SAR. On the other hand – from the same reason – there is better discrimination of firn zones in the upper, accumulation parts of glacier on ALOS PALSAR data. Nevertheless, research proved much better capabilities of glacier ice monitoring on radar data, than on optical ASTER and Landsat images. Detailed analysis of obtained result require to curry out further research such as: more GPR profiles and ice cores in every ice zone of glacier. That will allow to discriminate scattering mechanism characteristic of glacier zones.
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