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Topohack 2019

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Taking ICESat-2 to the mountains: a workflow using satellite laser altimetry to resolve topography over complex terrain

Background

Objectives

• Create simplified workflow to extract ICESat-2 ATL06 data
• Compare elevation profiles from ICESat-2 ATL06 products over complex terrain with existing high-resolution DEM datasets
• Compare Snow-off DEM over Grand Mesa with winter (October to February) IceSat-2 collects.

Goals

• Explore OpenAltimetry and utility with multiple locations and time periods
• Explore and understand ATL06 products, flags, and theoretical basis
• Work with tutorial notebook to download ICESat-2 data using spatial and temporal filters
• Learn how to subset ATL03 and ATL06 data based on flags
• Create a python library to make it easier to download by spatial and temporal filters
• Convert the HDF5 files to xarray and geopandas/shapely polygons
• Intersect ICESat-2 data 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.

Methods/Planned Approach

Tools/Libraries

numpy
scipy
rasterio
pandas
geopandas

Collaborators

Vibhor Agarwal
Michelle Hu
Friedrich Knuth
HP Marshall
Justin Pflug
Mariama Dryak
Will Kochtitzky

Team Lead:

Shashank Bhushan

Data Science Leads:

Joe Meyer
Amy Steicker

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References

ATL06 technical references