Improving sub-canopy snow depth mapping with unmanned aerial vehicles: lidar versus structure-from-motion techniques

Harder, Phillip; Pomeroy, John W.; Helgason, Warren D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1919-2020

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1919-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1919-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

Research article

|

15 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 15 Jun 2020

Improving sub-canopy snow depth mapping with unmanned aerial vehicles: lidar versus structure-from-motion techniques

Phillip Harder, John W. Pomeroy, and Warren D. Helgason

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Jun 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Dec 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Harder et al. 2020 Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Feb 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #1', Phillip Harder, 28 Apr 2020
RC2: 'Reviewer Comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Mar 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Referee #2', Phillip Harder, 28 Apr 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (28 Apr 2020) by Chris Derksen

AR by Phillip Harder on behalf of the Authors (29 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (05 May 2020) by Chris Derksen

AR by Phillip Harder on behalf of the Authors (06 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Unmanned-aerial-vehicle-based (UAV) structure-from-motion (SfM) techniques have the ability to map snow depths in open areas. Here UAV lidar and SfM are compared to map sub-canopy snowpacks. Snow depth accuracy was assessed with data from sites in western Canada collected in 2019. It is demonstrated that UAV lidar can measure the sub-canopy snow depth at a high accuracy, while UAV-SfM cannot. UAV lidar promises to quantify snow–vegetation interactions at unprecedented accuracy and resolution.