Snow avalanche detection and mapping in multitemporal and multiorbital radar images from TerraSAR-X and Sentinel-1

Leinss, Silvan; Wicki, Raphael; Holenstein, Sämi; Baffelli, Simone; Bühler, Yves

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1783-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1783-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1783-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

19 Jun 2020

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 19 Jun 2020

Snow avalanche detection and mapping in multitemporal and multiorbital radar images from TerraSAR-X and Sentinel-1

Silvan Leinss, Raphael Wicki, Sämi Holenstein, Simone Baffelli, and Yves Bühler

Data sets

Sentinel-1 change detection mosaic of Switzerland for the avalanche event of January 4th 2018 S. Leinss, S. Holenstein, and R. Wicki https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000376048

SPOT6 Avalanche outlines 24 January 2018 E. Hafner and Y. Bühler https://doi.org/10.16904/envidat.77

Short summary

To assess snow avalanche mapping with radar satellites in Switzerland, we compare 2 m resolution TerraSAR-X images, 10 m resolution Sentinel-1 images, and optical 1.5 m resolution SPOT-6 images. We found that radar satellites provide a valuable option to map at least larger avalanches, though avalanches are mapped only partially. By combining multiple orbits and polarizations from S1, we achieved mapping results of quality almost comparable to single high-resolution TerraSAR-X images.