Ocean Remote Sensing with Synthetic Aperture Radar

Dear Colleagues,

The oceans covers approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface, 90% of the biosphere and contains 97% of Earth’s water. In 1978, NASA launched the first SeaSat satellite, primilary aiming at ocean observations and the microwave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was one of four instruments. Since then, the global oceans have been observed on SAR images, which has a high resolution (<100 m spatial resolution) and a large swath (450 km for ScanSAR mode images). The microwave SAR can image the ocean surface in all weather conditions and day or night. An increasing number of SAR satellites have become available since the early 1990s, such as the ERS-1/-2 and Envisat satellites, the Radarsat-1/-2 satellites, the COSMO-SkyMed satellites, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, among others. Recently, the European Space Agency lauched a new generation of SAR satellites (Sentinel-1A in 2014 and Sentinel-1B in 2016). This operational SAR mission, for the first time, provides researchers with free and open SAR images necessary to carry out broader and deeper investigation of the global oceans.

SAR remote sensing on ocean and coast monitoring has become a research hotspot in geoscience and remote sensing. This Special Issue on “Ocean Remote Sensing with Synthetic Aperture Radar” is focused on ocean dynamical studies of sea surface phenomena, air–sea interactions, man-made object detection and radar imaging mechanisms. We would like to invite articles on ocean-related studies using state-of-the-art SAR techniques. The topics of this Special Issue include, without being limited to, the following subjects: 

• Ocean applications with SAR imagery (wind, wave, precipataion, etc.)
• SAR studies of physical and biological oceanography
• Coastline extraction and inland area classification of SAR imagery
• Methods for ship and other man-made objects’ detection
• Remote sensing of oceanic surface and internal waves, upwellings, bathymetry, etc.
• Cyclone–related parameters retrieval from SAR satellite observations
• Marine atmospheric boundary layer process studies using SAR and remotely sensed data
• Remote sensing modelling over complex sea surfaces
• Oil spill and seep detections with SAR
• PolSAR and InSAR application for coastal research issues

Authors are requested to check and follow the specific Instructions to Authors, see https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/165068305/Remote_Sensing-Additional_Instructions.pdf. 

We look forward to receiving your submissions in this interesting area of specialization.

Dr. Xiaofeng Yang
Dr. Xiaofeng Li
Dr. Ferdinando Nunziata
Dr. Alexis Mouche
Guest Editors

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