[ 1 ] We use data of the ASPERA-4 ion and electron spectrometers onboard Ve nus Express to determine the locations and shapes of the plasma boundaries (bow shock, ion composition boundary,a nd mantle) at Ve nus. We also investigate the variation of the terminator bow shock position as afunction of the solar wind dynamic pressure and solar EUV flux. We compare the results with a3 -D hybrid simulation. In the hybrid model, ions are treated as individual particles moving in self-consistently generated electromagnetic fields and electrons are modeled as am assless charge neutralizing fluid. The planetary heavy ion plasma is generated by an oxygen ionosphere and exosphere adapted to ap rofile, which depends on the solar zenith angle (Chapman layer). A comparison between observations and simulations indicates that the hybrid model is able to produce an adequate picture of the global plasma environment at Ve nus. The positions of the plasma boundaries are well reproduced by the model but asignificant disagreement appears in the absolute values of the considered parameters.

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We present an algorithm for automatic detection of the land-water-line from TerraSAR-X images acquired over the Wadden Sea. In this coastal region of the southeastern North Sea, a strip of up to 20 km of seabed falls dry during low tide, revealing mudflats and tidal creeks. The tidal currents transport sediments and can change the coastal shape with erosion rates of several meters per month. This rate can be strongly increased by storm surges which also cause flooding of usually dry areas. Due to the high number of ships traveling through the Wadden Sea to the largest ports of Germany, frequent monitoring of the bathymetry is also an important task for maritime security. For such an extended area and the required short intervals of a few months, only remote sensing methods can perform this task efficiently. Automating the waterline detection in weather-independent radar images provides a fast and reliable way to spot changes in the coastal topography. The presented algorithm first performs smoothing, brightness thresholding, and edge detection. In the second step, edge drawing and flood filling are iteratively performed to determine optimal thresholds for the edge drawing. In the last step, small misdetections are removed.

Bathymetry, the topography of the sea floor, is in high demand due to the increase in offshore constructions like wind parks. It is also an important dataset for climate change modelling, when sea level rises and changes in circulation currents are to be simulated. The retrieval of accurate bathymetry data is a cost-intensive task usually requiring a survey vessel charting the respective area. However, bathymetry can also be retrieved remotely using data from Earth observation satellites. The main point of this study is the development of a processor that allows the automatic derivation of gridded bathymetry information from spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. Observations of sea state modifications in SAR images are used to derive the bathymetry in shelf areas using the shoaling effect, which causes wavelengths to become shorter when reaching shallower waters. The water depth is derived using the dispersion relation for surface water waves, which requires wavelength and wave period as input parameters. While the wavelength can be directly retrieved from the SAR image, for the peak period additional information and procedures are required, e.g. local measurements or complex SAR data. A method for automatically deriving the wave period for swell waves in SAR images was developed and tested in this paper. It uses depth data from public databases as initial values which are compared to derived depths iterating through possible peak periods along the calculation grid; the peak period resulting in a minimal root-mean-square deviation is then used for bathymetry calculation. The bathymetry derived from a TerraSAR-X acquisition of the Channel Islands is presented; the resulting peak wave period of 11.3 s fits well to nearby in situ measurement data.