Articles | Volume 14, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1409-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1409-2020
Research article
 | 
30 Apr 2020
Research article |  | 30 Apr 2020

Towards a webcam-based snow cover monitoring network: methodology and evaluation

Céline Portenier, Fabia Hüsler, Stefan Härer, and Stefan Wunderle

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Cited articles

Arslan, A. N., Tanis, C. M., Metsämäki, S., Aurela, M., Böttcher, K., Linkosalmi, M., and Peltoniemi, M.: Automated Webcam Monitoring of Fractional Snow Cover in Northern Boreal Conditions, Geosciences, 7, 55, https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences7030055, 2017. a, b, c, d
Baboud, L., Čadík, M., Eisemann, E., and Seidel, H.: Automatic photo-to-terrain alignment for the annotation of mountain pictures, in: CVPR 2011, 41–48, https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2011.5995727, 2011. a
Bühler, Y., Adams, M. S., Bösch, R., and Stoffel, A.: Mapping snow depth in alpine terrain with unmanned aerial systems (UASs): potential and limitations, The Cryosphere, 10, 1075–1088, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1075-2016, 2016. a
Corripio, J. G.: Snow surface albedo estimation using terrestrial photography, Int. J. Remote Sens., 25, 5705–5729, https://doi.org/10.1080/01431160410001709002, 2004. a
De Michele, C., Avanzi, F., Passoni, D., Barzaghi, R., Pinto, L., Dosso, P., Ghezzi, A., Gianatti, R., and Della Vedova, G.: Using a fixed-wing UAS to map snow depth distribution: an evaluation at peak accumulation, The Cryosphere, 10, 511–522, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-511-2016, 2016. a
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Short summary
We present a method to derive snow cover maps from freely available webcam images in the Swiss Alps. With marginal manual user input, we can transform a webcam image into a georeferenced map and therewith perform snow cover analyses with a high spatiotemporal resolution over a large area. Our evaluation has shown that webcams could not only serve as a reference for improved validation of satellite-based approaches, but also complement satellite-based snow cover retrieval.
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