Abstract
Abstract. The seasonal snow cover and permanent ice in form of Himalayan glaciers provide fresh water to many perineal rivers of Himalayas. The melt water from seasonal snow and glaciers, especially during of 15 March to 15 June acts as important source of water for drinking, hydropower and irrigation requirements of many areas in North India. This work has highlights the use of C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from RISAT-1, Sentinel-1A and 1B satellites and ALOS-PALSAR-2 PolInSAR data for snow cover and glacier dynamics study for parts of North West Himalaya. Glacier velocity was derived using InSAR based method using 6 day temporal interval images from Sentinel-1 satellites and 14 day interval for PALSAR-2 satellite. High coherence was obtained for main glacier in both the data sets, which resulted accurate line of site (LOS) glacier velocity estimates for test glaciers. These InSAR data glacier velocity results are obtained after a gap of 21 years. Glacier facies was estimated using multi-temporal SAR image composition based classification. All these maps were verified by extensive ground surveys done at these sites during 2014–2017. The time series data of C-band SAR in VV/VH polarisation was also used to map snow cover in test basins of Bhagirathi and Beas River. The VV/VH data clearly shows difference between dry and wet snow, thus helping in improved snow cover mapping using SAR data. This study will help in refining algorithms to be used for such studies using upcoming NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) mission.
Highlights
The seasonal snow cover and glacier are the globally recognised essential climate variables (WMO-2017), which controls the water availability in head water Himalayan watershed and rivers basins (Singh and Kumar 1997, 2007)
The wet snow is taken below -20 db and dry snow above -5 db, with 0 and above values taken as layover or double bounce features
4.2.1 Glacier velocity estimation: The DInSAR data from Sentinal-1A satellite have been processed for three major glaciers of North West Himalaya (NWH)
Summary
The seasonal snow cover and glacier are the globally recognised essential climate variables (WMO-2017), which controls the water availability in head water Himalayan watershed and rivers basins (Singh and Kumar 1997, 2007). The brief about snow cover and glacier mapping and monitoring using remote sensing, the gap areas and objectives are given . The snow accumulates during the winter till March April and melts during spring and summer months, with minimum snow cover at the end of ablation season, i.e. last week of August (Thakur et al, 2017a,b). This snow melt is augmented by glacier melt, which contributes significantly during ablation season (June-August) and minimum glacier melt in winters (Dobhal et al ; Agrawal et al, 2017). The only major limitation of SAR sensors is no penetration when snow is wet, less temporal resolution and operations in single wavelength (Hallikainen et al, 2001; Thakur et al, 2012)
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