The Use of Meris Spectrometer Data in Seasonal Snow Mapping

The objective of this work is to evaluate the use of the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) data for seasonal snow cover monitoring specifically in the boreal forest belt. For this purpose, we tuned an existing method for fractional snow cover mapping in order to produce snow maps from MERIS imagery. The method was originally developed at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), where it is successfully used to provide frequent Snow Covered Area (SCA) maps from Terra/MODIS data. The possibility to switch between MERIS and successive multi-spectral optical sensors could ensure the snow service continuity and sufficient data supply for snow monitoring and even enable improved accuracy in snow map production. We found that MERIS visible channels suit well for SCAmapping.