Automated High-Resolution Satellite Image Registration Using Supraglacial Rivers on the Greenland Ice Sheet

Yang, Kang; Karlstrom, L.; Smith, L. C.; Li, Manchun

doi:10.1109/jstars.2016.2617822

Cited by 24 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The southwest GrIS has received the most attention from ice sheet supraglacial hydrologic studies in recent years (McGrath et al, 2011;Lampkin and VanderBerg, 2014;Poinar et al, 2015;Smith et al, 2015;Gleason et al, 2016;Yang and Smith, 2016a;Yang et al, 2016;Smith et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2017). Extensive, complex supraglacial river networks have been observed and mapped from 0.5-2.0 m WorldView (McGrath et al, 2011;Yang and Smith, 2013;Smith et al, 2015;Yang et al, 2016;Koziol et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2017) and 15-30 m Landsat-7/8 images (Lampkin and VanderBerg, 2014;Poinar et al, 2015;de Fleurian et al, 2016;Yang and Smith, 2016a). These supraglacial river networks drain large volumes of meltwater into the ice sheet (Smith et al, 2015) with important implications for ice dynamics (Zwally et al, 2002;Bartholomew et al, 2011;Andrews et al, 2014;Wright et al, 2016).…”

Section: Northwest Gris Near Inglefield Landmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mapping supraglacial rivers is a crucial task for understanding their hydrological and glaciological roles (Chu, 2014). However, their reliable delineation from remotely sensed imagery is complicated by narrow channel widths relative to typical image resolutions, variable contrast between supraglacial meltwater and the surrounding snow/firn/ice, and complex surface drainage patterns (McGrath et al, 2011;Yang and Smith, 2013;Smith et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2017). Landsat-7/8 images (spatial resolution 15-30 m) have been used to map trunk main-stems of large supraglacial rivers on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (Lampkin and VanderBerg, 2014;Poinar et al, 2015;de Fleurian et al, 2016;Yang and Smith, 2016a;Bell et al, 2017;Kingslake et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Supraglacial rivers on the northwest Greenland Ice Sheet, Devon Ice Cap, and Barnes Ice Cap mapped using Sentinel-2 imagery

Yang

Smith

Sole

et al. 2019

International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinfor

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Supraglacial rivers set efficacy and time lags by which surface meltwater is routed to the englacial, subglacial, and proglacial portions of ice masses. However, these hydrologic features remain poorly studied mainly because they are too narrow (typically <30 m) to be reliably delineated in conventional moderate-resolution satellite images (e.g., 30 m Landsat-8 imagery). This study demonstrates the utility of 10 m Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument images to map supraglacial rivers on the northwest Greenland Ice Sheet, Devon Ice Cap, and Barnes Ice Cap, covering a total area of ~ 10,000 km 2. Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 both capture overall supraglacial drainage patterns, but Sentinel-2 images are superior to Landsat-8 images for delineating narrow and continuous supraglacial rivers. Sentinel-2 mapping across the three study areas reveals a variety of supraglacial drainage patterns. In northwest Greenland near Inglefield Land, subparallel supraglacial rivers up to 55 km long drain meltwater directly off the ice sheet onto the proglacial zone. On the Devon and the Barnes ice caps, shorter supraglacial rivers (up to 15-30 km long) are commonly interrupted by moulins, which drain internally drained catchments on the ice surface to subglacial systems. We conclude that Sentinel-2 offers strong potential for investigating supraglacial meltwater drainage patterns and improving our understanding of the hydrological conditions of ice masses globally.

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Section: Northwest Gris Near Inglefield Landmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supraglacial rivers on the northwest Greenland Ice Sheet, Devon Ice Cap, and Barnes Ice Cap mapped using Sentinel-2 imagery

Yang

Smith

Sole

et al. 2019

International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinfor

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“…This has been done in supraglacial channels for catchment characteristics and slope-area analysis [10], and extensively in terrestrial systems for network structure and self-similarity (see [71]), and scale independent morphometrics such as sinuosity and junction angles. General network geometry, independent of initiation area, may also be of interest to researchers for a range of methodological purposes such as satellite image geo-registration [72].…”

Section: Limitations and Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flow Routing for Delineating Supraglacial Meltwater Channel Networks

et al. 2016

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Abstract:Growing interest in supraglacial channels, coupled with the increasing availability of high-resolution remotely sensed imagery of glacier surfaces, motivates the development and testing of new approaches to delineating surface meltwater channels. We utilized a high-resolution (2 m) digital elevation model of parts of the western margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) and retention of visually identified sinks (i.e., moulins) to investigate the ability of a standard D8 flow routing algorithm to delineate supraglacial channels. We compared these delineated channels to manually digitized channels and to channels extracted from multispectral imagery. We delineated GrIS supraglacial channel networks in six high-elevation (above 1000 m) and one low-elevation (below 1000 m) catchments during and shortly after peak melt (July and August 2012), and investigated the effect of contributing area threshold on flow routing performance. We found that, although flow routing is sensitive to data quality and moulin identification, it can identify 75% to 99% of channels observed with multispectral analysis, as well as low-order, high-density channels (up to 15.7 km/km 2 with a 0.01 km 2 contributing area threshold) in greater detail than multispectral methods. Additionally, we found that flow routing can delineate supraglacial channel networks on rough ice surfaces with widespread crevassing. Our results suggest that supraglacial channel density is sufficiently high during peak melt that low contributing area thresholds can be employed with little risk of overestimating the channel network extent.

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“…For example, satellites can directly image glacial hydrology features (e.g., Smith et al, ), but small supraglacial streams or small moulins can be difficult to distinguish from satellite images (e.g., King et al, ). We expect narrower streams to be more prevalent than wider ones, but the width frequency statistics in Greenland (Yang et al, ) has a peak at around 2 m, which implies that supraglacial streams as wide as 2 m are incompletely captured even from 0.5 m resolution images. On the other hand, the seismic‐based technique has the potential to observe smaller moulins because we confidently capture 2 m wide moulins in this study, although smaller moulins have weaker and potentially higher frequency radiation that may be more difficult to capture using geophones.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Seismologically Observed Spatiotemporal Drainage Activity at Moulins

et al. 2017

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Hydrology is important for glacier dynamics, but it is difficult to monitor the subsurface drainage systems of glaciers by direct observations. Since meltwater drainage generates seismic signals, passive seismic analysis has the potential to be used to monitor these processes. To study continuous seismic radiation from the drainage, we analyze geophone data from six stations deployed at the Kaskawulsh Glacier in Yukon, Canada, during the summer of 2014 using ambient noise cross‐correlation techniques. We locate the noise sources by backprojecting the amplitude of the cross correlation to the glacier surface. Most of the ambient noise sequences are found in two clusters, with each cluster located in the vicinity of a moulin identified at the surface. Stronger seismic radiation is observed during the day, consistent with expected variability in melt rates. We demonstrate that the sparse seismic network array with 2 km station separation has the ability to detect moulins within the array with a precision of 50 m. We confirm that seismic activity is correlated with air temperature, and thus, melt, on a diurnal timescale, and precipitation correlates with the activity at longer timescales. Our results highlight the potential of passive seismic observations for monitoring water flow into subglacial channels through moulins with an affordable number of seismic stations, but quantification of water flow rates still remains a challenge. The cross‐correlation backprojection technique described here can also potentially be applied to any localized source of ambient noise such as ocean noise, tectonic tremor, and volcanic tremor.

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Automated High-Resolution Satellite Image Registration Using Supraglacial Rivers on the Greenland Ice Sheet

Cited by 24 publications

References 42 publications

Supraglacial rivers on the northwest Greenland Ice Sheet, Devon Ice Cap, and Barnes Ice Cap mapped using Sentinel-2 imagery

Supraglacial rivers on the northwest Greenland Ice Sheet, Devon Ice Cap, and Barnes Ice Cap mapped using Sentinel-2 imagery

Flow Routing for Delineating Supraglacial Meltwater Channel Networks

Seismologically Observed Spatiotemporal Drainage Activity at Moulins

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