SAR Detection of Bear Dens in Snow

Abstract:
Current methods for locating polar bear dens in snow are expensive and unreliable. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) penetrates significantly into dry snow, allowing the imaging of buried structures such as bear dens. This study uses electromagnetic simulations alongside SAR imagery of known denning sites to assess the feasibility of detecting dens using SAR. The simulations indicate that SAR can detect occupied dens, but due to limited number of images containing occupied dens and current processing shortcomings, no den signatures have been conclusively identified to date. Further investigation involving additional simulations and improved SAR focusing of the real data is proposed.