Abdul Basir Mahmoodzada and Divyesh Varade and Sawahiko Shimada (2020) Estimation of Snow Depth in the Hindu Kush Himalayas of Afghanistan during Peak Winter and Early Melt Season. Estimation of Snow Depth in the Hindu Kush Himalayas of Afghanistan during Peak Winter and Early Melt Season. pp. 1-21.

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Abstract

The Pamir ranges of the Hindu Kush regions in Afghanistan play a substantial role in
regulating the water resources for the Middle Eastern countries. Particularly, the snowmelt runoff in
the Khanabad watershed is one of the critical drivers for the Amu River, since it is a primary source
of available water in several Middle Eastern countries in the off monsoon season. The purpose of
this study is to devise strategies based on active microwave remote sensing for the monitoring of
snow depth during the winter and the melt season. For the estimation of snow depth, we utilized
a multi-temporal C-band (5.405 GHz) Sentinel-1 dual polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
with a differential interferometric SAR (DInSAR)-based framework. In the proposed approach,
the estimated snowpack displacements in the vertical transmit-vertical receive (VV) and vertical
transmit-horizonal receive (VH) channels were improved by incorporating modeled information
of snow permittivity, and the scale was enhanced by utilizing snow depth information from the
available ground stations. Two seasonal datasets were considered for the experiments corresponding
to peak winter season (February 2019) and early melt season (March 2019). The results were validated
with the available nearest field measurements. A good correlation determined by the coefficient of
determination of 0.82 and 0.57, with root mean square errors of 2.33 and 1.44 m, for the peak winter
and the early melt season, respectively, was observed between the snow depth estimates and the field
measurements. Further, the snow depth estimates from the proposed approach were observed to
be significantly better than the DInSAR displacements based on the correlation with respect to the
field measurements

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: DInSAR; dual polarimetric SAR; Sentinel-1; snow depth; snow permittivity
Divisions: PSG College of Arts and Science > Department of Environmental Science
Depositing User: Mr Team Mosys
Date Deposited: 17 Apr 2024 05:45
Last Modified: 17 Apr 2024 05:45
URI: http://ir.psgcas.ac.in/id/eprint/2124

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