Basic Study on the Characteristics of Energy and Water fluxes in the Alpine Region and Satellite Remote Sensing of Snow

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This study investugates the discrepancies of heat budgets on snow surface between in the high alpine area and in the lower-lands through the field observations. The energy exchanges across the snow surface were measured at three observation sites ; two were located at the diffrent elevations, 2950m and 3400m, on the northern slope of Mt.Fuji and the other at 300m in Niigata prefecture. Snowmelt was calculated using snow density measured by snow sampler once a week and melting depth by camera in every six hours. The role of turbulent hear flux in high alpine area was more important than in the lower-land. The latent heat flux was usually negative and the large positive latent heat flux associated with the warm, humid and strong wind sometimes caused the very intense snowmelt in the high alpine area.Microwave remote sensing techniques offer important advatages for snow mapping : the all weather capability and the possibility to detect snow water equivalent directly. However there are many factors which influence on the microwave signature of snow such as grain size, liquid water content, density and stratification. The profile of dielectric constant represents the major snow properties. The dielectric constant model was established based on the field measurements of snow using the portable dielectric probe. Furtermore the temporal and spatial distributions of the profile of the dielectric constant in two regions were identified by applying the model to the exsiting snow pit observation data.