Identification of mountain snow cover using SSM/I and artificial neural network

The Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) radiometer is practical in monitoring snow conditions for its sensitive response to the changes in snow properties. A single-hidden-layer artificial neural network (ANN) was employed to accomplish this remote sensing task, with radiometric observations of brightness temperatures (Tbs) as input data, to derive information about snow. Error backpropagation learning was applied to train the ANN. After learning the mapping of SSM/I Tbs to snow classes, the ANN approach showed a significant promise for identifying mountainous snow conditions. Error rates were 3% for snow-free, 5% for dry snow, 9% for wet snow, and 0% for refrozen snow, respectively. This study indicates the potential of ANN supervised learning for the inference of snow conditions from SSM/I observations. Further improvement on the application of ANN for large-scale snow monitoring can be expected by using more training data derived from both plains and mountain regions