Landscape Freeze/Thaw Mapping from Active and Passive Microwave Earth Observations over the Tursujuq National Park, Quebec, Canada

Touati, Cheima; Ratsimbazafy, Tahiana; Poulin, Jimmy; Bernier, Monique; Homayouni, Saeid und Ludwig, Ralf (2021): Landscape Freeze/Thaw Mapping from Active and Passive Microwave Earth Observations over the Tursujuq National Park, Quebec, Canada. In: Ecoscience, Bd. 28, Nr. 3-4: S. 421-433

Abstract

We investigated the sensitivity to vegetation cover type of active (PALSAR) and passive (SMAP) freeze/thaw (F/T) classification. We also used F/T classification from high-resolution PALSAR data (30 m) to follow the evolution of frozen and thawed soil states obtained from an adaptive algorithm with low-resolution SMAP data (36 km). We used PALSAR and SMAP scenes acquired from June 2015 to January 2017 over the Tursujuq National Park (Umiujaq, Quebec, Canada). A new F/T algorithm with a specific reference threshold under each vegetation type (shrub, grass, lichen, wetland, and bare land) is proposed to classify PALSAR pixels. The validation of the PALSAR F/T classification with soil temperature at similar to 5 cm depth revealed a greater overall accuracy (> 80%), with horizontal transmitted and vertical received (HV) thresholds. The PALSAR F/T classification shows that a SMAP pixel is classified as frozen when more than 50% of its area is frozen at the surface. We confirmed the sensitivity to vegetation cover type of passive and active F/T classification with L-band sensor.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Geowissenschaften > Department für Geographie
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 550 Geowissenschaften, Geologie
• ISSN: 1195-6860
• Sprache: Englisch