USING SMOS PASSIVE MICROWAVE DATA TO DEVELOP SMAP FREEZE/THAW ALGORITHMS ADAPTED FOR THE CANADIAN SUBARCTIC

Abstract

Seasonal terrestrial Freeze/Thaw cycle in Northern Quebec Tundra (Nunavik) was determined and evaluated with passive microwave observations. SMOS time series data were analyzed to examine seasonal variations of soil freezing, and to assess the impact of land cover on the Freeze/Thaw cycle. Furthermore, the soil freezing maps derived from SMOS observations were compared to field survey data in the region near Umiujaq. The objective is to develop algorithms to follow the seasonal cycle of freezing and thawing of the soil adapted to Canadian subarctic, a territory with a high complexity of land cover (vegetation, soil, and water bodies). Field data shows that soil freezing and thawing dates vary much spatially at the local scale in the Boreal Forest and the Tundra. The results showed a satisfactory pixel by pixel mapping for the daily soil state monitoring with a > 80% success rate with in situ data for the HH and VV polarizations, and for different land cover. The average accuracies are 80% and 84% for the soil freeze period, and soil thaw period respectively. The comparison is limited because of the small number of validation pixels.