Development of New Thermal Ratio Index for Snow/Ice Identification
M Anul Haq1, Kamal Jain2, KPR Menon3
1M Anul Haq, Dept. Civil Engg(Geomatics Section)., Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India.
2Dr Kamal Jain, Dept. Civil Engg(Geomatics Section)., Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India.
3KPR Menon, Dept. Civil Engg(Geomatics Section)., Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India.
Manuscript received on December 07, 2011. | Revised Manuscript received on December 23, 2011. | Manuscript published on January 05, 2012. | PP: 282-285 | Volume-1 Issue-6, January 2012. | Retrieval Number: F0329121611/2012©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Existing methods and newly developed method of monitoring snow-covered areas by optical remote sensing were evaluated using the ASTER Satellite data of Satopanth and Bhagirathi Kharak Glaciers, and Landsat satellite data of Gangotri glacier, one of the largest ice bodies in the Indian Himalayas. Snow-covered areas were identified using two methods: (1) Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) which uses visible and shortwave-infrared reflectance’s, and (2) a newly proposed snow index called NDSTI which uses visible, thermal-infrared reflectance’s. NDSTI can be achieved by the ratioing of significantly distinguishing bands and normalizing those values to a standardized range will provide a sensitive and comparable test of thermal character. The NDSTI is useful for the identification of snow and ice and for separating snow/ice and most water bodies. The NDSTI is a measure of the relative magnitude of the characteristic reflectance difference between the visible and TIR reflectance of snow. A comparison between NDSI vs. NDSTI has been attempted in current investigation.
Keywords: Accumulation, Classification, processing, Snow, Thermal.