Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Snow Observation from Space: An approach to improving snow cover detection using four decades of Landsat and Sentinel-2 imageries across Switzerland

Published inScience of remote sensing, p. 100182
Publication date2024-12
Abstract

Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites offer significant advantages for monitoring snow cover over mountainous countries like Switzerland. Starting in the 1970s, Landsat data provides over 50 years of medium resolution imagery. However, the main limitation of optical imagery is cloud cover. Cloud obstruction is particularly challenging for Landsat and Sentinel-2 data, which have limited temporal resolutions. In this study we present the Snow Observation from Space (SOfS) algorithm composed of seven successive temporal and spatial techniques to reduce cloud coverage in the final snow cover products. We used long-term Landsat and Sentinel-2 datasets available from the Swiss Data Cube. The results indicate that the filtering techniques are efficient in reducing cloud cover by half while still leaving an average of less than 30% of cloud cover. The accuracy of the entire algorithm is evaluated over Switzerland, using in-situmeasurements of 263 climate stations in the period 1984-2021. The validation results show an agreement between SOfS dataset and ground snow observations with an average accuracy of 93%.

Keywords
  • Multi-sensors snow cover products
  • Long-term time series
  • Optical remote sensing
  • Landsat
  • Sentinel-2
  • Data cube technology
  • Cloud cover obstruction
Citation (ISO format)
POUSSIN, Charlotte, PEDUZZI, Pascal, GIULIANI, Gregory. Snow Observation from Space: An approach to improving snow cover detection using four decades of Landsat and Sentinel-2 imageries across Switzerland. In: Science of remote sensing, 2024, p. 100182. doi: 10.1016/j.srs.2024.100182
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Journal ISSN2666-0172
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Technical informations

Creation08/12/2024 08:49:41
First validation10/12/2024 08:52:14
Update14/04/2026 11:16:12
Status update14/04/2026 11:16:12
Last indexation14/04/2026 11:16:14
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