Integration of Webcam data for deriving Snow cover and snow depth from Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Pléiades data

The variability in snow cover has huge impact on climate, on a variety of ecosystems, and on socio-economic aspects of human life. Snowfall and persistence of snow cover are strongly dependent on atmospheric temperature and precipitation, thus likely to change in complex ways in a changing climate. In the Alpine region, snow cover variability is a high socio-economic aspect not only as local water resource and storage, but also as climate-related hazard and winter tourism. To quantify the effect of climate change on snow variation and the annual and inter-annual snow dynamics required by local stakeholders, a continuous reliable measurement of the temporal and spatial variability of snow cover is needed. For monitoring snow cover variability, the most important parameters are the amount and duration of seasonal snow cover and snow depth from where the amount of water stored within the snowpack can be derived.

WebSnow focuses on improving snow cover maps and snow depth estimates using a large network (accessible via Bergfex) of webcam images available at different elevation zone from ski resort and mountain areas. The overall goal of the project is to develop a methodology and study the feasibility of using webcam images for (i) validating and improving snow cover maps from high resolution Sentinel-1 & -2 data and for (ii) deriving snow depth from Pléiades images at higher temporal resolutions and larger areas than what is feasible using UAV and aerial images.