Combination of Active and Passive Microwave to Estimate Snowpack Properties in Great Lakes Area

In this research we examine active and passive microwave to snow water equivalent (SWE) and to investigate the potential of combining active and passive microwaves to improve the estimation of SWE. The study area is located in Great Lakes area between the latitudes of 41N–49N and the longitudes of 87W–98W. Passive microwave are obtained from DMSP SSM/I sensors provided by NSIDC. Active microwave were obtained from different sensors: 1) RADARSAT C-Band SAR. 2) QuikSCAT Ku-band (13.4GHz) for both vertical and horizontal polarizations. The ground truth data was obtained from SNODAS data set produced by NOHRSC. An Artificial Neural Network model was defined to model various combinations of inputs to SWE. The results indicate that none of the active microwave channels produce satisfactory results. However, when combined with passive microwave, they improve the estimated SWE.