Taking ICESat-2 to the mountains: a workflow using satellite laser altimetry to resolve topography over complex terrain
Compare and evaluate ICESat-2 data with high resolution DEMs (airborne lidar/satellite stereo) collected at lower latitudes over bare ground.
Vibhor Agarwal
Michelle Hu
Friedrich Knuth
HP Marshall
Justin Pflug
Mariama Dryak
Will Kochtitzky
Shashank Bhushan
Joachim Meyer
Amy Steicker
- ICESat-2 ATL06 (20 m resolution)
- ICESat-2 ATL03 (geolocated points along track)
- Bareground data (LULC for US, Global Bareground Data Product for areas outside US)
- WADNR Lidar
- ASO Lidar
- Himat DEMs
- Jemez, NM CZO
- DEM from H.P.
- Python: geopandas, rasterio, numpy, scipy, pandas, pygeotools, demcoreg
- NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline
- Learn how to download the ICESat-2 data by lat lon bounding box
- Create library with some basic convenience functions
- Explore OpenAltimetry and utility with multiple locations and time periods
- Explore ATL03 and ATL06 products and theoretical basis
- Learn how to subset ATL03 and ATL06 data based on flags
- Intersect ICESat-2 tracks with RGI glacier polygons to get a sense of bare ground coverage near glaciers.
- Evaluate/Compare the topography resolved by ICESat-2 profiles along steep mountains with topographic profiles returned from high-resolution DEMs.
- Get a sense of snow accumulation (depth) by comparing Snow-off DEM over Grand Mesa with winter (October to February) IceSat-2 collects.
- Create notebook that shows how to pull all cloud-free data for entire mission for target area bounding box.
- Dependent on ICESat-2 coverage.
- Potential study sites: Cascades and Olympic Ranges (western WA), Rocky Mountains (CO), High Mountain Asia, Grand Mesa (CO)
Further information can be found on our team wiki page