Spectral analysis of airborne passive microwave measurements of alpine snowpack: Colorado, USA

Hotelling's T-squared test revealed that the Tb for each forest cover and snow depth class differed statistically from each of the others, for dry snow, notwithstanding that within-class Tb variability tended to be larger than the between-class differences. The J-M distance indicated that most classes were somewhat separable based on the Tb spectra. Consistent with expectations, J-M distance between classes was lower for forested areas than for un-forested areas, emphasizing the confounding influence of trees on characterizing snow using Tb measurements.