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: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
2018
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 |
id |
ftmdpi:oai:mdpi.com:/2072-4292/10/7/1155/ |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftmdpi:oai:mdpi.com:/2072-4292/10/7/1155/ 2023-08-20T04:04:01+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 2018-07-21 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 EN eng Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Remote Sensing; Volume 10; Issue 7; Pages: 1155 Snow Cover Extent (SCE) TerraSAR-X Landsat wet snow small Arctic catchments satellite time series Text 2018 ftmdpi https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 2023-07-31T21:38:20Z 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 ... Text Arctic Herschel Herschel Island Tundra Yukon MDPI Open Access Publishing Arctic Yukon Canada Herschel Island ENVELOPE(-139.089,-139.089,69.583,69.583) Remote Sensing 10 7 1155 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
MDPI Open Access Publishing |
op_collection_id |
ftmdpi |
language |
English |
topic |
Snow Cover Extent (SCE) TerraSAR-X Landsat wet snow small Arctic catchments satellite time series |
spellingShingle |
Snow Cover Extent (SCE) TerraSAR-X Landsat wet snow small Arctic catchments satellite time series 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 |
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 |
Text |
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 |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-139.089,-139.089,69.583,69.583) |
geographic |
Arctic Yukon Canada Herschel Island |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Yukon Canada Herschel Island |
genre |
Arctic Herschel Herschel Island Tundra Yukon |
genre_facet |
Arctic Herschel Herschel Island Tundra Yukon |
op_source |
Remote Sensing; Volume 10; Issue 7; Pages: 1155 |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071155 |
container_title |
Remote Sensing |
container_volume |
10 |
container_issue |
7 |
container_start_page |
1155 |
_version_ |
1774714450062868480 |