0000000000922145
AUTHOR
B. Di Mauro
Using Optical and Thermal Data for Tracking Snowmelt Processes in Alpine Area
Alpine catchments represent a fundamental reservoir of fresh water at midlatitude. Remote sensing offers the opportunity to estimate snow properties in the optical, thermal and microwave domains. In particular, the possibility to estimate snow density from remote sensing is relevant and still represents a great challenge for the remote sensing scientific community. Since changes of snow density and liquid water content occur continuously in the snowpack, spatial and temporal patterns of optical and thermal data can give information about snowmelt processes. The main goal of this study is to evaluate if snow thermal inertia can be an indicator of snowmelt processes and to evaluate its relati…
Introducing Thermal Inertia for Monitoring Snowmelt Processes With Remote Sensing
Thermal inertia has been successfully used in remote sensing applications that span from geology, geomorphology to hydrology. In this paper, we propose the use of thermal inertia for describing snow dynamics. Two different formulations of thermal inertia were tested using experimental and simulated data related to snowpack dynamics. Experimental data were acquired between 2012 and 2017 from an automatic weather station located in the western Italian Alps at 2,160 m. Simulations were obtained using the one‐dimensional multilayer Crocus model. Results provided evidences that snowmelt phases can be recognized, and average snowpack density can be estimated reasonably well from thermal inertia o…