Supraglacial Rivers on the Greenland Ice Sheet Delineated from Combined Spectral-Shape Information in High Resolution WorldView-2 Satellite

Imagery
C43C 0619
Thurs. Dec. 6, 2012 1:40pm 6:00pm

Kang
1

1, 2*, Yang

Laurence C.

2 Smith

Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, 210093, China 2 Department of Geography. University of California - Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA *E-mail: yangkangnju@gmail.com

Introduction
High-resolution mapping of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) surface drainage features and their evolution over time would substantially advance scientific understanding of GrIS mass balance, ice flow dynamics, and contributions to global sea level rise. However, most remote-sensing studies of GrIS supraglacial hydrology to date have focused on the distribution and evolution of lakes large enough to be visible in coarse- or moderate- resolution satellite imagery. Aside from field studies, far less attention has been given to supraglacial streams and rivers, so even basic understanding of their abundance, temporal dynamics and interactions with glaciological features is currently lacking. We present an automated procedure to exploit both spectral and shape information to delineate supraglacial streams on the GrIS ablation zone using high-resolution visible/NIR satellite imagery. A total of 30 WorldView-2 images were acquired over a six day period (July 18-23, 2012) immediately following an extreme surface melting event (July 13-14, 2012). As such, this map is believed to represent a first synoptic snapshot of ice sheet surface drainage and actively flowing moulins during an advanced stage of seasonal development and flow efficiency.

Results

Conclusions / Future Work

Supraglacial streams are a crucial and little-studied component of the GrIS hydrologic drainage system but are challenging to delineate in visible/near-infrared imagery. This new combined spectral-shape method yields effective delineation of actively flowing streams while eliminating slush area with similar spectral signatures, and dry channels/crevasses/fractures with similar shapes. By fusing multi-threshold and morphological procedures with the use of edge detection, these difficulties are substantially overcome. The supraglacial stream delineation is a first attempt to identify prospective hydrologic drainage patterns for the Greenland ice sheet. Further analysis is required in depth to gain physical meaning, such as the form, drainage pattern, and flux of supraglacial meltwater channels to the subsurface.

Method
The prime tasks of the river mapping procedure are to: (1) distinguish active streams from lakes, slush and ice; (2) distinguish active streams from other linear and/or semi-linear features that do not contain water. These tasks are achieved through a multi-step procedure of water extraction, stream delineation, and slush elimination as follows (Yang and Smith, in press).

Fig. 3. Supraglacial river density map of Kangerlussuaq area, southwestern GrIS.

Also, the present river delineation method focuses on multi-spectral images, thus limiting the approach to deep, wide blue water rivers. However, shallow, smaller streams are visible in higher resolution panchromatic data, and could in principle be used to derive substantially more detailed supraglacial stream networks (Figure 4)

Water extraction: NDWIice, a modified NDWI (Normalized Difference Water Index), was proposed here, using the normalized ratio of the blue and red bands to better discern supraglacial water features in the unique environment of GrIS. A single global threshold was insufficient for universal stream detection from NDWIice image, and a multi-threshold method was developed here. In total, three global thresholds were used: (1) a liberal NDWIice threshold designed to capture as many water pixels as possible (tlow); (2) a stringent NDWIice threshold designed to capture deep-water bodies such as lakes (thigh); and (3) an intermediate NDWIice value (tmod) between tlow and thigh designed to help eliminate slush. Stream delineation: Of the three NDWIice thresholds, features extracted using tmod was preferred for active stream delineation, owing to its capability to identify numerous active streams while eliminating most areas of slush. However, two issues still remained. First, not all slush was removed from the classification. Second, owing to longitudinal variations in NDWIice, this intermediate threshold sometimes failed to detect short segments along a stream course, causing gaps/disconnects in its corresponding delineation. The first problem was mitigated using an edge detection method and is presented in slush elimination section. The second problem was mitigated using the multi-points fast marching method to rejoin resulting stream fragments and create connected stream candidate image. Slush elimination: A shape-orientated approach is used to reduce erroneously thinned slush features while preserving active streams. Only the pixels that were delineated in both the dilated edge image and the connected stream candidate image were marked as active stream pixels.

Fig. 4. Supraglacial blue-water rivers extracted from multi-spectral WorldView-2 imagery using the method described here (blue lines), superimposed over the panchromatic band. Most shallower, smaller streams are missed using the present methdology. Fig. 1. Supraglacial river delineations were carried out using 30 multi-spectral WorldView-2 images acquired during 18-23 July 2012 over the southwestern GrIS ablation zone near Kangerlussuaq (1100-1600m). Activated moulins were also mapped (green dots), and their upstream topographic watershed divides also delineated using the GIMP DEM (red polygons). Few moulins are located within topographic depressions, the majority occur at abruptly terminating supraglacial rivers. By late July, depressions (lakes) serve primarily as transition features that continue to deliver water laterally.

References
Howat I M , Negrete A, Scambos T, Haran T, in prep, A high-resolution elevation model for the Greenland Ice Sheet from combined stereoscopic and photoclinometric data. Yang K, Smith L C. Supraglacial Streams on the Greenland Ice Sheet Delineated from Combined Spectral-Shape Information in High Resolution Satellite Imagery. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 2012 (in press).

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Fig. 2. Supraglacial stream delineation from WorldView-2 images. (a) The WorldView-2 image (RGB: Bands 5, 3, 2) contains numerous supraglacial streams in both a slush region (A) and nonslush region (B). The corresponding NDWIice image (b) reveals higher NDWIice values in slush; (c) Global water classifications using tmod as NDWIice threshold; Application of the spectralshape method to the NDWIice tmod classification shown in (c): (d) morphological closing; (e) morphological thinning; (f) minimal action map generated from the multi-points fast marching method; (g) preliminary stream delineation with gaps rejoined; (h) dilated edges from the Canny edge detector used to mask (g); (i) final, actively flowing supraglacial stream network after secondary slush elimination using edge detection (from Yang and Smith, in press).

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the NASA Cryosphere Program managed by Thomas Wagner (grant NNX11AQ38G). Special thanks to Paul Morin and Claire Porter at the Polar Geospatial Center for providing us with high resolution WorldView-2 satellite imagery. Special thanks to Ian Howat for providing us with a beta-version of the 30m GIMP DEM.