EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/egusphere-2025-2435 Brief Communication: Evaluating Snow Depth Measurements from Ground-Penetrating Radar and Airborne Lidar in Boreal Forest and Tundra Environments during the NASA SnowEx 2023 Campaign Holland-Goon Kajsa https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4199-7698 1 Bonnell Randall 2 1 McGrath Daniel https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9462-6842 1 Baxter W. Brad 3 Meehan Tate 4 Webb Ryan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1565-909X 5 Larsen Chris 6 Marshall Hans-Peter 7 Mason Megan 8 9 Vuyovich Carrie 8 Department of Geosciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Mission Area, Denver, Colorado, USA Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering & Construction Management, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA Department of Geosciences, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA Science Systems Applications Inc., Lanham, Maryland, USA 01 08 2025 2025 1 12 Copyright: © 2025 Kajsa Holland-Goon et al. 2025 This work has been dedicated to the public domain (Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication). To view the legal code, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2435/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2435/egusphere-2025-2435.pdf

We evaluated ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and airborne lidar retrievals of snow depth collected during the NASA SnowEx 2023 campaign in Alaskan tundra and boreal forest environments along 44 short (3–12 m) transects. Compared to in situ observations, we identified modest biases for GPR snow depths (bias <0.03 m in tundra, +0.06 m in boreal forests) and larger biases for lidar snow depths (bias +0.19 m at a tundra site, –0.16 m in boreal forests) related sub-snow vegetation, tussocks, and seasonally dynamic ground. These complex surface environments present a challenge to established methods, which needs to be considered when evaluating novel remote sensing approaches.

 National Aeronautics and Space Administration 80NSSC20K1624 80NSSC22K1113