Snow Covered Area for Selected Watersheds in the Sierra Nevada

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Snow Covered Area for Selected Watersheds in the
Sierra Nevada

• Karl Rittger
• ESM 266
• May 21, 2005

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Environmental Variables

• What does snow covered area depend on?
• Precipitation/
• Weather Patterns
• Elevation
• Slope
• Aspect
• Temperature

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Area of Study
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Fractional Snow Covered Area
End member Spectra
Landsat Resolution vs. Variability of Snow
Covered Area (SCA)
Fractional SCA using Rosenthal
Dozier Algorithm Decision Tree
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April 5th 1985

• A custom color stretch
• of bands 5, 4, and 3.

• SCA processed with fractional pixel algorithm
• 0-100 SCA
• Equation to determine total area
• Area Pixel CountPixel AreaSCA10-8

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San Joaquin Basin, Area 4419km2
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Mono Lake Basin, Area 1840km2
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Elevation Distribution
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Windward vs. Leeward Basins
Normalized by total Area to see relative
distribution
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Snow Pillows to Check SCA
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Things to do

• Use mask for water
• Other watersheds
• Reproject data to see if snow pillow matches
• Normalize by Area per elevation
• Investigate maximum table rows for GIS

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Questions?