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This study presents the first results obtained with the ENVISAT satellite radar altimeter RA-2 over lands and ice caps. As radar altimetry was firstly devoted to ocean study, this paper starts with a detailed description of the radar altimetry principle over continental surfaces: a general formulation of the radar altimeter echoes according to different surface types is given and the retracking procedure ICE-2, specially implemented on the ENVISAT satellite ground segment to provide output parameters over continents, is clearly presented. The ENVISAT RA-2 datasets processed with the ICE-2 procedure are then mapped given an overall description of the output parameters over various surfaces. The behaviour of these ENVISAT altimetric parameters are analysed and related to main land surface characteristics such as surface/volume echo, specularity, roughness…. Apart from few unexpected signals which will need to be …