In the not-too-distant future, an increasing use will be made of earth-orbiting satellites to survey our natural resources. One resource that has been observed from space since the first meteorological satellite nearly a decade ago, is the earth\u27s snow cover. Continued observation of this resource will be a prime use of satellite systems designed specifically to view the earth1 s surface; in fact, a survey of snow and ice on a world-wide scale, as planned in the International Hydrological Decade, appears economically feasible only through the use of satellite observations. Thus, snow surveillance is a really down-to-earth use of space technology.
Recent studies of the use of satellite photography to map snow cover distributions in the Upper Mississippi-Missouri River Basins Region are described in this paper. The techniques presented for identifying and mapping snow distributions, and for estimating snow depths, were developed originally from TIROS photography, * and were tested on a data sample obtained from the ESSA satellites. 2 Additional research is currently in progress to determine whether these techniques developed for the relatively flat terrain of the north-central United States are also applicable to mountainous areas. This research is briefly reviewed, and the outlook for operational snow surveillance from space is discussed
