TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada
The timing of snowmelt is an important turning point in the seasonal cycle of small Arctic catchments. The TerraSAR-X (TSX) satellite mission is a synthetic aperture radar system (SAR) with high potential to measure the high spatiotemporal variability of snow cover extent (SCE) and fractional snow c...
Published in: | Remote Sensing |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
MDPI AG
2018
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 https://doaj.org/article/ffc2728f2977430a926ed9e99e779832 |
id |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:ffc2728f2977430a926ed9e99e779832 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:ffc2728f2977430a926ed9e99e779832 2023-05-15T14:52:26+02:00 TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada Samuel Stettner Hugues Lantuit Birgit Heim Jayson Eppler Achim Roth Annett Bartsch Bernhard Rabus 2018-07-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 https://doaj.org/article/ffc2728f2977430a926ed9e99e779832 EN eng MDPI AG http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/7/1155 https://doaj.org/toc/2072-4292 2072-4292 doi:10.3390/rs10071155 https://doaj.org/article/ffc2728f2977430a926ed9e99e779832 Remote Sensing, Vol 10, Iss 7, p 1155 (2018) Snow Cover Extent (SCE) TerraSAR-X Landsat wet snow small Arctic catchments satellite time series Science Q article 2018 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 2022-12-31T16:33:59Z The timing of snowmelt is an important turning point in the seasonal cycle of small Arctic catchments. The TerraSAR-X (TSX) satellite mission is a synthetic aperture radar system (SAR) with high potential to measure the high spatiotemporal variability of snow cover extent (SCE) and fractional snow cover (FSC) on the small catchment scale. We investigate the performance of multi-polarized and multi-pass TSX X-Band SAR data in monitoring SCE and FSC in small Arctic tundra catchments of Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) off the Yukon Coast in the Western Canadian Arctic. We applied a threshold based segmentation on ratio images between TSX images with wet snow and a dry snow reference, and tested the performance of two different thresholds. We quantitatively compared TSX- and Landsat 8-derived SCE maps using confusion matrices and analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamics of snowmelt from 2015 to 2017 using TSX, Landsat 8 and in situ time lapse data. Our data showed that the quality of SCE maps from TSX X-Band data is strongly influenced by polarization and to a lesser degree by incidence angle. VH polarized TSX data performed best in deriving SCE when compared to Landsat 8. TSX derived SCE maps from VH polarization detected late lying snow patches that were not detected by Landsat 8. Results of a local assessment of TSX FSC against the in situ data showed that TSX FSC accurately captured the temporal dynamics of different snow melt regimes that were related to topographic characteristics of the studied catchments. Both in situ and TSX FSC showed a longer snowmelt period in a catchment with higher contributions of steep valleys and a shorter snowmelt period in a catchment with higher contributions of upland terrain. Landsat 8 had fundamental data gaps during the snowmelt period in all 3 years due to cloud cover. The results also revealed that by choosing a positive threshold of 1 dB, detection of ice layers due to diurnal temperature variations resulted in a more accurate estimation of snow cover than a negative threshold ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Herschel Herschel Island Tundra Yukon Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Arctic Canada Herschel Island ENVELOPE(-139.089,-139.089,69.583,69.583) Yukon Remote Sensing 10 7 1155 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
Snow Cover Extent (SCE) TerraSAR-X Landsat wet snow small Arctic catchments satellite time series Science Q |
spellingShingle |
Snow Cover Extent (SCE) TerraSAR-X Landsat wet snow small Arctic catchments satellite time series Science Q Samuel Stettner Hugues Lantuit Birgit Heim Jayson Eppler Achim Roth Annett Bartsch Bernhard Rabus TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada |
topic_facet |
Snow Cover Extent (SCE) TerraSAR-X Landsat wet snow small Arctic catchments satellite time series Science Q |
description |
The timing of snowmelt is an important turning point in the seasonal cycle of small Arctic catchments. The TerraSAR-X (TSX) satellite mission is a synthetic aperture radar system (SAR) with high potential to measure the high spatiotemporal variability of snow cover extent (SCE) and fractional snow cover (FSC) on the small catchment scale. We investigate the performance of multi-polarized and multi-pass TSX X-Band SAR data in monitoring SCE and FSC in small Arctic tundra catchments of Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) off the Yukon Coast in the Western Canadian Arctic. We applied a threshold based segmentation on ratio images between TSX images with wet snow and a dry snow reference, and tested the performance of two different thresholds. We quantitatively compared TSX- and Landsat 8-derived SCE maps using confusion matrices and analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamics of snowmelt from 2015 to 2017 using TSX, Landsat 8 and in situ time lapse data. Our data showed that the quality of SCE maps from TSX X-Band data is strongly influenced by polarization and to a lesser degree by incidence angle. VH polarized TSX data performed best in deriving SCE when compared to Landsat 8. TSX derived SCE maps from VH polarization detected late lying snow patches that were not detected by Landsat 8. Results of a local assessment of TSX FSC against the in situ data showed that TSX FSC accurately captured the temporal dynamics of different snow melt regimes that were related to topographic characteristics of the studied catchments. Both in situ and TSX FSC showed a longer snowmelt period in a catchment with higher contributions of steep valleys and a shorter snowmelt period in a catchment with higher contributions of upland terrain. Landsat 8 had fundamental data gaps during the snowmelt period in all 3 years due to cloud cover. The results also revealed that by choosing a positive threshold of 1 dB, detection of ice layers due to diurnal temperature variations resulted in a more accurate estimation of snow cover than a negative threshold ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Samuel Stettner Hugues Lantuit Birgit Heim Jayson Eppler Achim Roth Annett Bartsch Bernhard Rabus |
author_facet |
Samuel Stettner Hugues Lantuit Birgit Heim Jayson Eppler Achim Roth Annett Bartsch Bernhard Rabus |
author_sort |
Samuel Stettner |
title |
TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada |
title_short |
TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada |
title_full |
TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada |
title_fullStr |
TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada |
title_full_unstemmed |
TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada |
title_sort |
terrasar-x time series fill a gap in spaceborne snowmelt monitoring of small arctic catchments—a case study on qikiqtaruk (herschel island), canada |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 https://doaj.org/article/ffc2728f2977430a926ed9e99e779832 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-139.089,-139.089,69.583,69.583) |
geographic |
Arctic Canada Herschel Island Yukon |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Canada Herschel Island Yukon |
genre |
Arctic Herschel Herschel Island Tundra Yukon |
genre_facet |
Arctic Herschel Herschel Island Tundra Yukon |
op_source |
Remote Sensing, Vol 10, Iss 7, p 1155 (2018) |
op_relation |
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/7/1155 https://doaj.org/toc/2072-4292 2072-4292 doi:10.3390/rs10071155 https://doaj.org/article/ffc2728f2977430a926ed9e99e779832 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 |
container_title |
Remote Sensing |
container_volume |
10 |
container_issue |
7 |
container_start_page |
1155 |
_version_ |
1766323675301150720 |