Fully Automated Detection of Supraglacial Lake Area for Northeast Greenland Using Sentinel-2 Time-Series

The usability of multispectral satellite data for detecting and monitoring supraglacial meltwater ponds has been demonstrated for western Greenland. For a multitemporal analysis of large regions or entire Greenland, largely automated processing routines are required. Here, we present a sequence of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Philipp Hochreuther, Niklas Neckel, Nathalie Reimann, Angelika Humbert, Matthias Braun
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
Series:Remote Sensing
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/2/205
Description
Summary:The usability of multispectral satellite data for detecting and monitoring supraglacial meltwater ponds has been demonstrated for western Greenland. For a multitemporal analysis of large regions or entire Greenland, largely automated processing routines are required. Here, we present a sequence of algorithms that allow for an automated Sentinel-2 data search, download, processing, and generation of a consistent and dense melt pond area time-series based on open-source software. We test our approach for a ~82,000 km<sup>2</sup> area at the 79 °N Glacier (Nioghalvfjerdsbrae) in northeast Greenland, covering the years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Our lake detection is based on the ratio of the blue and red visible bands using a minimum threshold. To remove false classification caused by the similar spectra of shadow and water on ice, we implement a shadow model to mask out topographically induced artifacts. We identified 880 individual lakes, traceable over 479 time-steps throughout 2016–2019, with an average size of 64,212 m<sup>2</sup>. Of the four years, 2019 had the most extensive lake area coverage with a maximum of 333 km<sup>2</sup> and a maximum individual lake size of 30 km<sup>2</sup>. With 1.5 days average observation interval, our time-series allows for a comparison with climate data of daily resolution, enabling a better understanding of short-term climate-glacier feedbacks.
ISSN:2072-4292