The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data have been used to study sea ice with respect to its motion and formation/deformation. With the prospect of the Alaska SAR Facility development in the near future, there is a great need for robust and efficient sea-ice analysis techniques. This paper presents a sea-ice motion analysis technique that can be used for (1) local motion analysis of a selected ice patch and (2) a global ice motion over the entire image area. Though there are several sea-ice

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... n tracking techniques, they do not provide the required operational speed or robustness. In order to meet the operational speed requirement (over fifty images per day), we have developed a sea-ice motion analysis technique which requires very little human interaction and much simplified computation. The proposed technique uses a subset of easily distinguishable features to predict global motion characteristics and apply template matching over a predicted search area. We applied the developed technique to two pairs of SEASAT SAR images, one pair with a minor motion of "ice pack" and another with a larger and discontinuous motion of "fast ice". The two major achievements of the new approach are: first, development of a set of computer-aided tools for feature selection and registration and, secondly, implementation of an optimal search strategy for automatic template matching via a motion prediction model.