Radar Remote Sensing of Wetlands in Boreal Eurasia and North America for use in Methane Emission Modeling
Erika
Podest, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, erika.podest@jpl.nasa.gov
(Presenting)
Kyle
McDonald, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, kyle.mcdonald@jpl.nasa.gov
Ted
Bohn, University of Washington, tbohn@hydro.washington.edu
Dennis
Lettenmaier, University of Washington, dennisl@u.washington.edu
Mahta
Moghaddam, The University of Michigan, mmoghadd@eecs.umich.edu
Jane
Whitcomb, The University of Michigan, jbwhit@umich.edu
In the northern high latitudes, wetlands and open water bodies are common landscape features. Their carbon and methane emissions can have a large influence on hydrologic processes, surface-atmosphere carbon exchange, and associated impacts on global climate. It is therefore of great importance to assess their spatial extent and temporal character to improve hydrologic and ecosystem process modeling. SAR is an effective tool for this purpose because it is sensitive to surface water and it can monitor large inaccessible areas regardless of atmospheric conditions or solar illumination. We employ multi-temporal L-band SAR data from the Japanese satellites JERS-1 and PALSAR to map wetlands and open water bodies in Alaska and at a selection of study sites within the NEESPI domain, in Eurasia.
A supervised decision tree based approach was used to generate the land cover products. For Alaska, we assembled regional-scale 100 m monthly JERS-1 mosaics from 1998 to assess open water change. DEM’s and derived slope were also employed to improve classification performance in topographically complex regions where radar shadowing was prevalent. For selected basins in Eurasia, PALSAR and Landsat data were used in conjunction with JERS-1 imagery to map wetlands and open water change, at 30 m resolution. Products were validated with land cover and open water maps derived from Landsat, AVHRR, MODIS and SRTM. We examined methods for integrating these products within a hydrologic and methane modeling construct to investigate how wetland methane emissions respond to climate change.
This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, at the University of Washington, and at The University of Michigan under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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