My most recent interest is the study of seasonal inundation along the major rivers of Arctic Russia. Permanently frozen ground and spring snowmelt in the south cause massive flooding along these very large rivers in Spring and Summer of each year. This flooding provides large quantities of freshwater, sediment, and nutrients to the shallow shelf of the Arctic Ocean. Raster GIS is used to determine whether water bodies are connected or detached from a primary or secondary river channel. Lighter greytones reveal areas that are hydrologically linked with channels late into the summer.
Red areas represent floodplain lakes that are isolated at the end of the summer.
This image is useful for determining sediment sinks and source areas of organic nutrients to Arctic river waters. Change detection images are useful for identifying temporally dynamic features on the Earth surface. Seasonal floodin patterns can be clearly seen in this image. Unlike the connectivity map, above, this image shows all variations in radar backscatter through time, including returns from isolated water bodies. However, the biggest problem with its use is that wind roughens the water surface, increasing radar backscattering to the satellite.