Study Area:
The Columbia Icefield straddles the Continental Divide along the Alberta–British Columbia (BC) border (Figure 3). Elevation ranges from 1000 to 3700 m.a.s.l., the climate is characterized by long winters and short summers, with low temperatures and large amounts of precipitation falling primarily as snow. Mean annual temperature and total annual precipitation of the Columbia Icefield are –4.08 °C and 1277 mm, respectively, between 1919 and 2009 [Tenant, Menounous, 2013]. Columbia Icefield glaciers (8 glaciers) average retreat is about -48.5 m annually from 2000 to 2016 based on TM and ETM satellite image analyses. I used the collection of random sample points to extract albedo and temperature of MODIS products in time series. One group of samples represent the core of icefield that are located in the ablation zone and other sample points are located below equilibrium line in the margins of icefield in ablation zone (Figure4). . |
Data collection:
In this study, I used four groups of data and information:
1- Space born daily data that are consist of coarse resolution data extracted from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products for albedo (MOD11A1) and temperature (MOD10A1), 2000-2016.
2- Temperature and precipitation of climate stations which are located in the outer border of Columbia icefield (existing stations) came from Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and British Columbia DataBC, 2005-2016. This groups of data used for increase accuracy of Modis land surface temperature.
3-Wildfire spatial database for Canada from Natural Resources Canada, since1980.
4- Air flow patch vectors based on Hysplit trajectory analyses in specific time from NOAA Air Resources laboratories, 2000-2016.
Summer (Jun, July and August) is the temporal scale of data and information.
Data Analyse:
Spatial statistic analysis was performed on surface albedo and surface temperature in order to find where and when surface albedo and surface temperature is reduced. The Raster time series package in R program was used to extract time series data in the location of sample points.
I used linear Regression Analyses between albedo and temperature to figure out the correlation between variables in the margin and core of icefield. Also, cross intersection of affected wildfires into albedo plot by time used to describe the effect of wildfire soot’s on albedo decrease. In addition, I utilized the Erdass Imagine 2014 for satellite image data analysis, Arcgis10.5 for spatial statistic, R 3-4-3 and Microsoft office for statistic analyse and NOAA Hysplit for back trajectory analyses.
Spatial statistic analysis was performed on surface albedo and surface temperature in order to find where and when surface albedo and surface temperature is reduced. The Raster time series package in R program was used to extract time series data in the location of sample points.
I used linear Regression Analyses between albedo and temperature to figure out the correlation between variables in the margin and core of icefield. Also, cross intersection of affected wildfires into albedo plot by time used to describe the effect of wildfire soot’s on albedo decrease. In addition, I utilized the Erdass Imagine 2014 for satellite image data analysis, Arcgis10.5 for spatial statistic, R 3-4-3 and Microsoft office for statistic analyse and NOAA Hysplit for back trajectory analyses.
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