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Quantifying the sensitivity of band ratio methods for clean glacier ice mapping

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Abstract

Many methods and techniques utilize a combination of different bandwidths in the visible, NIR (Near Infrared), and SWIR (Shortwave Infrared) regions for glacier ice mapping. In this study, we investigated and compared various techniques to map the clean ice area of the glaciers using Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 images. The effectiveness of different techniques and effects of different sensors on the mapping accuracy was also assessed in the Dhauliganga basin of Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand state of India. Also, the time series composite of Sentinel-1 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data was used as reference data for estimating the bare or clean glacier ice area. It was reported from the study that clean ice/snow areas mapped using band ratios Red/SWIR and NIR/SWIR from Landsat 8 were overestimated by 4.41% and 4.94% respectively which were larger as compared to Sentinel 2. The most rigorous and well-known technique for glacier mapping, NDSI (Normalized Difference Snow Index) was also checked for both sensors. Clean ice/snow areas mapped from NDSI were found to be 1.35% less as compared to Red/SWIR and 2.62% greater as compared to NIR/SWIR bands of the Landsat 8. However using the same bands from the Sentinel 2, NDSI overestimated 0.67% and 5.27% respectively over both the ratios.

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Acknowledgements

The study is a part of the Ph.D. program of the Department of Geography, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University (HNBGU), and in collaboration with Water Resources Department, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS-ISRO), Dehradun, India. The author is grateful to his Supervisors and acknowledged for the technical and overall support in the study. We are thankful to the United States Geological Survey for providing an option to download the Landsat and Sentinel datasets through Earth Explorer freely. We are also grateful to the Water Resources Department of IIRS-ISRO, Dehradun, for providing lab facilities like software and other technical requirements.

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  1. School of Earth Science, Department of Geography, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, Srinagar-Garhwal, Uttarakhand, 246174, India

    Dhanendra K. Singh & Bhanu Prasad Naithani

  2. Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS-ISRO), 4 Kalidas Road, Dehradun, 248001, India

    Dhanendra K. Singh, Praveen K. Thakur & Suvrat Kaushik

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  1. Dhanendra K. Singh
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Singh, D.K., Thakur, P.K., Naithani, B.P. et al. Quantifying the sensitivity of band ratio methods for clean glacier ice mapping. Spat. Inf. Res. 29, 281–295 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-020-00352-8

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