Snowcover Survey over an Arctic Glacier Forefield: Contribution of Photogrammetry to Identify “Icing” Variability and Processes

Éric Bernard,Jean-Michel Friedt,Madeleine Griselin

doi:10.3390/rs13101978

Abstract

The global climate shift currently underway has significant impacts on both the quality and quantity of snow precipitation. This directly influences the spatial variability of the snowpack as well as cumulative snow height. Contemporary glacier retreat reorganizes periglacial morphology: while the glacier area decreases, the moraine area increases. The latter is becoming a new water storage potential that is almost as important as the glacier itself, but with considerably more complex topography. Hence, this work fills one of the missing variables of the hydrological budget equation of an arctic glacier basin by providing an estimate of the snow water equivalent (SWE) of the moraine contribution. Such a result is achieved by investigating Structure from Motion (SfM) image processing that is applied to pictures collected from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as a method for producing snow depth maps over the proglacial moraine area. Several UAV campaigns were carried out on a small glacial basin in Spitsbergen (Arctic): the measurements were made at the maximum snow accumulation season (late April), while the reference topography maps were acquired at the end of the hydrological year (late September) when the moraine is mostly free of snow. The snow depth is determined from Digital Surface Model (DSM) subtraction. Utilizing dedicated and natural ground control points for relative positioning of the DSMs, the relative DSM georeferencing with sub-meter accuracy removes the main source of uncertainty when assessing snow depth. For areas where snow is deposited on bare rock surfaces, the correlation between avalanche probe in-situ snow depth measurements and DSM differences is excellent. Differences in ice covered areas between the two measurement techniques are attributed to the different quantities measured: while the former only measures snow accumulation, the latter includes all of the ice accumulation during winter through which the probe cannot penetrate, in addition to the snow cover. When such inconsistencies are observed, icing thicknesses are the source of the discrepancy that is observed between avalanche probe snow cover depth measurements and differences of DSMs.

Highlights

IntroductionCryosphere dynamics are highly dependent on snowcover processes, which trigger further hydrological processes
The surface of icings varies between a maximal extent of 0.087 km2 to a residual extent of 0.015 km2 at the very end of the hydrological season
The localization of remaining icing structures at the beginning and at the end of the season demonstrates the active water upwelling by capilarity through the snowpack as explained by [29]

Summary

Introduction

Cryosphere dynamics are highly dependent on snowcover processes, which trigger further hydrological processes. Snowmelt runoff is part of fresh water fluxes reaching oceans and, is strongly linked with snowpack spatio-temporal variability over a season [1,2]. In certainn environments, such as mountainous regions, snowpack dynamics often dominate water storage and release [3], which strongly influences geomorphological adaptation. In the high Arctic, year-after-year, a glacier retreat trend is generally observed, while the area of the proglacial moraine increases at the same time [4,5]

Methods

Results

Conclusion