Base de données de recherche des TNO

Régions: North Slave Region

étiquettes: physical sciences, hydrology, lake ice, remote sensing, snow water equivalence, snow

Objectif(s): To date, the use of passive microwave remote sensing data to estimate and monitor snow cover properties in Canada has been primarily focused on the prairie and boreal forest regions. This project would improve the national snow water equivalent (SWE) monitoring capabilities by acquiring the necessary data to estimate SWE in the spatially expansive and persistently snow covered tundra environment. This project is an on snow survey campaign for direct evaluation of space born passive microwave SWE retrievals within a large sub-basin of the Coppermine River. Analysis to date suggests that systematic passive microwave SWE underestimation occurs in the open tundra environment, potentially as a result of the unique microwave emission and scattering characteristics of frozen lakes which comprise a high proportion of the surface cover. A multi-agency, collaborative field campaign will involve the acquisition of in-situ snow cover and lake ice data to correspond with the remotely sensed datasets. These datasets will allow consideration of lake coverage in the current SWE algorithm suites, and produce a tundra specific SWE retrieval algorithm(s).