Few-Shot Domain Adaptation with Temporal References and Static Priors for Glacier Calving Front Delineation

Abstract

During benchmarking, the state-of-the-art model for glacier calving front delineation achieves near-human performance. However, when applied in a real-world setting at a novel study site, its delineation accuracy is insufficient for calving front products intended for further scientific analyses. This site represents an out-of-distribution domain for a model trained solely on the benchmark dataset. By employing a few-shot domain adaptation strategy, incorporating spatial static prior knowledge, and including summer reference images in the input time series, the delineation error is reduced from 1131.6 m to 68.7 m without any architectural modifications. These methodological advancements establish a framework for applying deep learning-based calving front segmentation to novel study sites, enabling calving front monitoring on a global scale.