Radar imaging of shallow water bathymetry: A case study in the Yangtze Estuary

This study focuses on 2-dimensional (2-D) radar imaging of bathymetric features in the shallow water of the Yangtze Estuary using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observations and model simulations. A validated 2-D shallow water numerical model simulates the barotropic current velocity, and the simulated current fields together with the relevant parameters of radar observations are then invoked in the radar imaging model as the input. The results show that variations in the simulated image intensity are mainly dominated by distinct radar backscatter anomalies caused by wave-current interactions in the vicinity of rapidly changing underwater topographies. The comparison between the simulated and observed SAR images shows a reasonable agreement, demonstrating that our approach may be implemented to monitor changes in the shallow water bathymetry of the Yangtze Estuary in the future.