Articles | Volume 18, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3277-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3277-2024
Research article
 | 
23 Jul 2024
Research article |  | 23 Jul 2024

Measuring prairie snow water equivalent with combined UAV-borne gamma spectrometry and lidar

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

Data sets

UAV-borne gamma spectrometry and lidar observations of prairie snow water equivalent P. Harder et al. https://doi.org/10.20383/103.0846

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Short summary
Remote sensing the amount of water in snow (SWE) at high spatial resolutions is an unresolved challenge. In this work, we tested a drone-mounted passive gamma spectrometer to quantify SWE. We found that the gamma observations could resolve the average and spatial variability of SWE down to 22.5 m resolutions. Further, by combining drone gamma SWE and lidar snow depth we could estimate SWE at sub-metre resolutions which is a new opportunity to improve the measurement of shallow snowpacks.