%0 Journal Article
%A Tao Che
%A Liyun Dai
%A Xingming Zheng
%A Xiaofeng Li
%A Kai Zhao
%+ Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing of Gansu Province, Heihe Remote Sensing Experimental Research Station, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China;;Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China;;Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China;;Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing 210023, China
%T Estimation of snow depth from passive microwave brightness temperature data in forest regions of northeast China
%J Remote Sensing of Environment
%D 2016
%V 183
%K Snow cover;Snow depth;Forest;Remote sensing;Passive microwave;Brightness temperature
%X Abstract(#br)Snow depth is an important factor in water resources management in Northeast China. Forest covers 40% of Northeast China, and the presence of forests influences the accuracy of snow depth retrievals from passive microwave remote sensing data. An optimal iteration method was used to retrieve the forest transmissivities at 18 and 36GHz based on the snow and forest microwave radiative transfer models and the snow properties measured in field experiments. The transmissivities at 18 and 36GHz are 0.895 and 0.656 in the horizontal polarization, and 0.821 and 0.615 in the vertical polarization, respectively. Furthermore, the forest transmissivity and snow properties were input into the Microwave Emission Model of Layered Snowpacks (MEMLS) to establish a dynamic look-up table (LUT). Snow depths were retrieved from satellite passive microwave remote sensing data based on the LUT method, and these retrievals were verified by snow depth observations at 103 meteorological stations. The results showed that the bias between the retrieved and measured snow depths is very small