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Estimating total snow volume in a small alpine watershed using remotely sensed data and ground-based surveys

Abstract:

Ground surveys of snow water equivalence and snow cover maps derived from Landsat TM imagery provided the basis for investigating different methods to estimate total snow volume in a small watershed of the eastern Sierra Nevada of California. Snow density profiles and Federal Snow Sampler observations along ground transects made up the measurements used to estimate the snow water equivalence at several points. The area of the snow cover was estimated with two techniques, a supervised classification and a method based on spectral mixture modeling. Total snow volume was obtained by distributing Snow water equivalence over the snow-covered area with the help of a digital elevation model. Snow volume estimates, in terms of their water equivalence, were compared with the estimated total snowmelt runoff. Total snowmelt runoff was estimated by subtracting baseflow determined with a graphical …