Spatially distributed snow depth, bulk density, and snow water equivalent from ground-based and airborne sensor integration at Grand Mesa, Colorado, USA

Abstract

Abstract. Spaceborne remote sensing of snow currently enables landscape-scale snow covered area, but estimating snow mass in the mountains remains a major challenge from space. Airborne LiDAR can retrieve snow depth, and some promising results have recently been shown from spaceborne platforms, yet density estimates are required to convert snow depth to snow water equivalent (SWE). However, the retrieval of snow bulk density remains unsolved, and limited data is available to evaluate model estimates of density in mountainous terrain. Knowledge of the spatial patterns and predictors of density is critical for accurate assessment of SWE and essential snow physics, such as energy balance and mechanics related to hazards and over-snow mobility. Toward the goal of landscape-scale retrievals of snow density, we estimated bulk density and length-scale variability by combining ground-penetrating radar (GPR) two-way travel-time observations and airborne LiDAR snow depths collected during the mid-winter NASA SnowEx 2020 campaign at Grand Mesa, Colorado, USA. Key advancements of our approach include an automated layer picking method that leverages co- and cross-polarization coherence and distributed LiDAR–GPR inferred bulk density with machine learning. The root-mean-square error between the distributed estimates is 12 cm for depth, 27 kg/m3 for density, and 42 mm for SWE, and the median relative uncertainty in distributed SWE is 7 %. Wind, terrain, and vegetation interactions display corroborated controls on bulk density that show model and observation agreement. The spatially continuous snow density and SWE estimated over approximately 16 km2 represents the next step towards broad-scale SWE retrieval.