Date of Award
5-17-2007
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
This research investigates the effect of lakes on late winter Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) and snow depth estimations on the North Slope of Alaska. Time-invariant and temporal sub-grid variability is assessed through the comparison of brightness temperature evolutions for three grid cells with varying lake fraction. Two new stepwise regression-derived algorithms to estimate SWE and snow depth using brightness temperatures and lake fractions, and two new algorithms to estimate lake fraction using brightness temperatures from SSM/I and AMSR-E are presented. Evaluation of various goodness-of-fit metrics display strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm. The methods employed in this study result in improved estimation with R² values of 0.202 for SWE and 0.292 for snow depth. The two lake fraction estimation algorithms resulted in R² values of 0.509 and 0.738 for SSM/I and AMSR-E, respectively. This study shows that spectral gradient methods utilizing the 19-37 GHz channel difference are not suitable for Alaska North Slope. Lakes were determined to have a strong effect on SWE and snow depth estimation. Inclusion of local lake fraction yielded improvements in performance.
Recommended Citation
Green, Jeffrey Douglas, "Assessing the effect of sub-grid cell lakes on late winter passive microwave snow water equivalent estimations on the North Slope of Alaska" (2007). Geosciences . 119.
https://ualaska.researchcommons.org/uaf_grad_geosci/119
Handle
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6937