Quantifying river ice movement through a combination of European satellite monitoring services

How to take advantage of optical satellites with near-simultaneous acquisitions to monitor fast displacements that occur at or near the Earth’s surface over large scales?

Replying to this question with respect to spring river ice break-up and associated ice-runs at Northern latitudes was the objective of a study by Living Planet fellow Bas Altena who analysed Sentinel-2 ad PROBA-V data for the purpose.

The study focused on 700km of Lena river, and demonstrates the great value of multi-sensor integration for velocity estimations at large scale.

River ice velocities on the 28th of May 2016, along a section of Lena river where a ice jam is present. In the inset are two subsets shown hundreds of kilometers downstream, where ice clearing has occurred and ice floes move rapidly along.

 

Details of the analysis and results are reported in a paper to be published next June on the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation.

 

Altena, B., and Kääb, A.
Quantifying river ice movement through a combination of European satellite monitoring services.
International Journal of Applied Remote sensing and Geo-information, 98, 102315,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102315, 2021

 

Read also the story published on Sentinel Online.

 

Featured image : Sentinel-2 acquisition over the Lena river in May 2020. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020)

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