Seeing the Snow Through the Trees

• Published in: Remote Sensing of the Terrestrial Water Cycle pp. 199 - 213
• Main Authors: Coons, Lexi P, Nolin, Anne W, Gleason, Kelly E, Mar, Eugene J, Rittger, Karl, Roth, Travis R, Painter, Thomas H
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken, NJ John Wiley & Sons, Inc 03.11.2014
• Subjects: canopy adjustments; forest canopy; satellite‐derived fractional snow‐covered area (ƒSCA)
• ISBN: 1118872037; 9781118872031
• DOI: 10.1002/9781118872086.ch12

To understand the limitations of current canopy adjustments and advance toward an improved method to account for subcanopy snow, this chapter aims to answer the following research questions: (1) How well do original satellite‐derived fractional snow‐covered area (ƒSCA) and canopy‐adjusted ƒSCA approximate subcanopy ƒSCA? (2) What spatiotemporal snow cover patterns explain differences between in situ snow cover and satellite‐derived ƒSCA? (3) What canopy structure metrics can account for differences between snow cover and satellite‐derived ƒSCA? To address the research questions, it examines patterns in satellite ƒSCA, in situ snow cover, and forest canopy structure. First, original satellite‐derived ƒSCA and canopy‐adjusted ƒSCA (ƒSCA ADJ ) are both compared against in situ observations of snow cover to assess the currently employed canopy adjustment. The spatial and temporal accuracy of ƒSCA ADJ is then examined across multiple study sites, and errors are evaluated by comparing spatial and temporal patterns in forested and open sites.