Large Scale Snow Cover Monitoring in Tundra Watersheds

1
Large Scale Snow Cover Monitoring in Tundra
Watersheds
Application of Passive Microwave Remote
Sensing

• November 24, 2005
• Kananaskis Researcher Retreat

2
Overall Goal

• To improve our understanding of snow cover
  properties and distribution in the Canadian Open
  Tundra. For application to remote sensing,
  hydrologic, climate and ecosystem modeling

3
Research Team

• Cold Regions Research Center
• Wilfrid Laurier University
• Dr. Micheal English
• Andrew Rees, Phd Candidate
• Dave Woods, MSc Candidate
• University of Waterloo
• Peter Toose, MSc Candidate
• Environment Canada
• Meteorological Service of Canada
• Dr. Chris Derksen
• Anne Walker
• Arvids Silis

4
Key Goals/Challenges

• Goals
• To improve current snow cover monitoring over the
  tundra landscape region
• Using passive microwave remote sensing
• Challenges
• Development and application of tundra specific
  snow water equivalent (SWE) retrieval algorithm.
  

5
Relevant State-of-The-Research

• Passive microwave remote sensing techniques
  Appealing for tundra snow cover monitoring.
• Large spatial coverage
• 24 hr and all weather imaging
• Long time series of data available
• Previous research has been focused on open
  prairies and boreal forest.
• There has been little success developing tundra
  specific methodologies.

6
Approach

• Identify and resolve sub-grid cell features that
  control satellite microwave emission

7
Approach

• Extensive in-situ snow surveys coupled with
  multi-scale remote sensing data acquisition

8
Stage of Research

• Snow cover data acquired during three field
  seasons 2003, 2004, 2005
• Multi-scale remote sensing data acquired during
  2005
• Data analysis has been focused on snow cover
  properties and distribution
• Future analysis will focus on relating snow cover
  to remote sensing data
• Field campaigns planned for 2006 to collect
  supplementary data

9
Key Findings/Observations

• Tundra snow depth non-uniform
• Landscape can be broken into terrain units
• Snow depth far greater on depositional features

10
Key Findings/Observations

• Important to consider fraction of land occupied
  by large depositional features.
• Classify, model landscape based on these units

11
Key Findings/Observations

• Areal extent important, consider volume

12
Insights on Knowledge Transfer

• First study to incorporate in-situ snow surveys
  with ground based, multi-scale airborne and
  satellite data in Tundra

13
Opportunities

• Current research by CRRC at WLU using stable
  isotope hydrology to compute snowmelt component
  in overall runoff
• Linked with pre-melt SWE estimated from satellite
  data this represents a very important
  contribution to basin hydrology research

14
Collaborative Interests

• Improved snow cover monitoring useful
  contribution to hydrology, climate and ecosystem
  modeling
• Data scaling issues fundamental problem to
  geographical research