ESTIMATION OF SNOW WETNESS BY A DUAL-FREQUENCY RADAR

In hydrological investigation, the liquid water content in snow pack is required which is important for modeling and forecasting snow melt runoff. Active microwave remote sensing has the potential of estimating snow parameters. In this study, we estimates snow wetness based on quasi crystalline approximation-dense media radiative transfer (QCA-DMRT) model at X (10.2 GHz) and Ku (16.7 GHz) bands and at dual-polarization (VV and VH). At first, snow volume backscattering and air-snow surface backscattering were decomposed from wet snow backscattering by analyzing X-band and Ku-band radar wet snow database generated from QCA-DMRT model. The database covers the most possible wet snow and air-snow surface physical properties conditions. Then using the surface scattering component to estimation snow wetness based on the relationship between the surface scattering and snow wetness.