| Description | Multitemporal Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR)
horizontally transmitted and horizontally received (HH) coherence data was decomposed
into temporal-coherence, spatial-coherence, and thermal noise components. The
multitemporal data spanned between February and May of 2008, and consisted of two pairs
of interferometric SAR (InSAR) images formed by consecutive repeat passes. With the
analysis of ancillary data, a snow increase process and a snow decrease process were
determined. Then, the multiple temporal-coherence components were used to study the
variation of thawing and freezing statuses of snow because the components can mostly
reflect the temporal change of the snow that occurred between two data acquisitions.
Compared with snow mapping results derived from optical images, the outcomes from the
snow increase process and the snow decrease process reached an overall accuracy of 71.3%
and 79.5%, respectively. Being capable of delineating not only the areas with or without snow cover but also status changes among no-snow, wet snow, and dry snow, we have
developed a critical means to assess the water resource in alpine areas. | en_US |
