The Potential of Using Landsat 7 Data for the Classification of Sea Ice Surface Conditions During Summer

• Main Authors: Markus, Thorsten, Ivanoff, Alvaro, Koblinsky, Chester J., Cavalieri, Donald J.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Earth Resources and Remote Sensing; Arctic; Baffin Bay; albedo; Baffin; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20010124074

During spring and summer, the Surface of the Arctic sea ice cover undergoes rapid changes that greatly affect the surface albedo and significantly impact the further decay of the sea ice. These changes are primarily the development of a wet snow cover and the development of melt ponds. As melt pond diameters generally do not exceed a couple of meters, the spatial resolutions of sensors like AVHRR and MODIS are too coarse for their identification. Landsat 7, on the other hand, has a spatial resolution of 30 m (15 m for the pan-chromatic band). The different wavelengths (bands) from blue to near-infrared offer the potential to distinguish among different surface conditions. Landsat 7 data for the Baffin Bay region for June 2000 have been analyzed. The analysis shows that different surface conditions, such as wet snow and meltponded areas, have different signatures in the individual Landsat bands. Consistent with in-situ albedo measurements, melt ponds show up as blueish whereas dry and wet ice have a white to gray appearance in the Landsat true-color image. These spectral differences enable the distinction of melt ponds. The melt pond fraction for the scene studied in this paper was 37%.