Snow monitoring of Xinjiang using MODIS data

Snow is one kind of special underlying surface which has high reflectivity, low thermal conductivity and snowbroth hydrological effect, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China is a snow-prone area, hereafter referred simply to Xinjiang area, frequent snow disaster leads to local people´s production and life affected, so accurate monitoring of snow has very important significance. This paper describes the current status of snow research using remote sensing technology at home and abroad, the basic knowledge and application of EOS/MODIS is simply introduced, NDSI (Normalized Difference Snow Index) is a measuring method which bases on the difference of visible and NIR (near infrared) bands reflectivity of snow, it can discriminate snow and snow free. In the case study area, the algorithm which combined NDSI and bands brightness temperature difference is taken to extract snow cover, comparing with meteorological data, the snow cover extracted from MODIS data prove to be accurate.