A Combined Approach for Monitoring Monthly Surface Water/Ice Dynamics of Lesser Slave Lake Via Earth Observation Data

Surface water/ice dynamic monitoring is crucial for many purposes, such as water resource management, agriculture, climate change, drought, and flood forecasting. New advances in remote sensing satellite data have made it possible to monitor the surface dynamics both spatially temporally. However, there are challenges when using these data, availability of valid imagery, cloud contamination issues Landsat-8, sensitivity Sentinel-1 C-band wind speed, topography, others. A combined methodology Landsat-8 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) was proposed create monthly change maps at 30 m spatial resolution Lesser Slave Lake Alberta, Canada, period 2017-2020. The potentials multi-spectral indices Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Water (NDWI), Modified NDWI (MNDWI) well SAR backscattering coefficients (VV-VH) Polarized (NDPI) separating from land were investigated. results obtained with historical discharge level measurements lake compared. Furthermore, show that MNDWI VH most effective creating maps. overall accuracies achieved 92.10% 68.86% cold months 99.88% 98.49% warm months, respectively.