How does the surface albedo form over heterogeneous sea ice and snowy landscapes from point scale to the scale of a satellite sensor? Can we tackle one of the biggest contributing factors in satellite data in-situ validation, surface heterogeneity, with rapid recent development in drone technologies?

Henna-Reetta is a researcher at Earth Observation Research unit in Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland. In her Master thesis she studied the snow conditions in Finland between 1919 and 2010 based on historical snow depth data records. She completed her PhD degree at University of Helsinki in 2022. Her doctoral thesis focused on the effect of taiga and tundra snowpack characteristics on development and validation of remote sensing of snow.

Research Objectives

The UAV-OBASiS project investigates the linkages between surface albedo, directional distribution of reflectance, surface heterogeneity and spatial scale over Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice and sub-arctic boreal snowy landscape. It aims to reduce the gap of ground truth information in these often-inaccessible environments by utilizing drone-based observations. The project will benefit improved satellite remote sensing of surface albedo over landscapes where high contrasts in albedo exist at spatial scales higher than that of the satellite sensor’s spatial resolution.