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The near-continuous time series of point clouds was acquired in the snow-covered area of the Schneeferner at the Zugspitze mountain in Germany using hourly terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) over a period of five days in April 2018. The dataset comprises around 130 epochs of 10 to 25 million points per scan with centimeter-scale accuracy and point spacing. The 4D geospatial dataset of the experimental near-continuous laser scanning setup can be used for analysis of snow cover dynamics and in general method development for change analysis of natural scenes using laser scanning time series.
The variability in snow cover have huge impact on climate, on a variety of ecosystems, and on socio-economic aspects of human life. Snowfall and persistence of snow cover are strongly dependent on atmospheric temperature and precipitation, thus likely to change in complex ways in a changing climate. In the Alpine region, snow cover variability is a high socio-economic aspect not only as local water resource and storage, but also as climate-related hazard and winter tourism. To quantify the effect of climate change on snow variation and the annual and inter-annual snow dynamics required by local stakeholders, a continuous reliable measurement of the temporal and spatial variability of snow cover is needed. For monitoring snow cover variability, the most important parameters are the amount and duration of seasonal snow cover and snow depth from where the amount of water stored within the snowpack can be derived. The available techniques and sampling strategies employed to quantify snow cover and depth have all strengths and limitations. To monitor the extent of wet snow areas during the melting season Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite data are currently used in the Alps. At dry snow conditions, the snow cover extent for complex alpine terrain can be retrieved from high-resolution optical satellite imagery. However, the fundamental challenges of satellite data remain in terms of data availability, spatial resolution and cloud cover. Furthermore, quantifying large scale snow depth from satellite platform remains on open issue. In this respect, snow depth is currently estimated at local and regional scale by mean of photogrammetric techniques from manned and unmanned aerial platforms. However, snow is a challenging surface for photogrammetric techniques due to its relatively uniform surface with limited identifiable features. An alternative to airborne technologies to derive snow cover and depth is terrestrial photography. Currently this technique is used on study areas under control conditions such as camera information are known, and often linked to meteorological stations equipped with snow depth sensors or snow stakes in the field of view of the camera. Only recently, outdoor webcam images are considered as potential data source for deriving snow cover, thanks to their high spatio-temporal resolution and availability. WebSnow focuses on improving snow cover maps and snow depth estimates using a large network (accessible via Bergfex) of webcam images available at different elevation zone from ski resort and mountain areas. The overall goal of the project is to develop a methodology and study the feasibility of using webcam images for (i) validating and improving snow cover maps from high resolution Sentinel-1 & -2 data and for (ii) deriving snow depth from Pléiades images at higher temporal resolutions and larger areas than what is feasible using UAV and aerial images. (abridged text)
Hourly meteorological observations from Leutasch, Austria, collected by an automatic weather station during the winter 2012-2013
NetCDF files containing raster layers of the Airborne SnowSAR observations, land cover (SCM) and elevation (DEM) over the Austrian ”AlpSAR” sites; Leutasch, Mittelbergferner and Rotmoos. The Airborne SnowSAR observations include the mean and the standard deviation of the X- and Ku-band backscatter (sigma nought) in VV- and VH-polarization, as well as the incidence angle in 10 m pixel size. The AlpSAR airborne data was collected in winter 2012-2013
ESRI shapefiles with the manual snow depth (SD) measurements collected in Austria during winter 2012-2013.
Snowpit measurements providing information on the snow properties in Austria during winter 2012-2013.
The European Space Agency (ESA) SnowSAR instrument is a side looking, dual polarized (VV/VH), X/Ku band SAR, operable from a small aircraft. Between 2010 and 2013, the instrument was deployed at several sites in Northern Finland, Austrian Alps, and northern Canada. The purpose of the airborne campaigns was to gather information on the backscattering properties of snow covered terrain to support the development of Snow Water Equivalent retrieval techniques using SAR. SnowSAR was deployed in Sodankylä, Northern Finland for a single test flight in March 2011 and ten acquisition flights at two sites (tundra and boreal forest) in the winter of 2011-2012. Over the Austrian Alps, three flight campaigns were performed between November 2012 and February 2013 over three sites located in different elevation zones, representing a montane valley, Alpine tundra, and a glacier environment. In Canada a total of two missions were flown in March and April 2013, over sites in the Trail Valley Creek watershed, Northwest Territories, representative of the tundra snow regime. This data package includes the collected airborne SAR data, as well as coincident in situ information on meteorological conditions, land cover, vegetation and snow properties.
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