High spatial and temporal resolution land surface temperature for the Antarctic Dry Valleys

Anthropogenic Climate Change is expected to take a toll on the Antarctic environment and its biodiversity, which is concentrated on the continent’s few ice-free areas, such as the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV). To model the current terrestrial habitat distribution and predict possible climate induced changes, high spatial and temporal resolution abiotic variables, especially land surface temperature (LST) and soil moisture are needed, but are currently unavailable.

The aim of this project is to fill this gap and create a high resolution LST dataset of the Antarctic Dry Valleys. This variable is acquired in a high temporal resolution (sub-daily) by the MODIS sensor aboard Terra and Aqua satellites. However, as LST varies greatly in space, the spatial resolution provided by this data source (1000 m) is too low to give a meaningful impression of LST and to study biodiversity patterns. Therefore, we use data from Landsat and ASTER sensors as a reference to downscale MODIS LST to a spatial resolution of 30 m. 7 year’s worth of satellite data as well as terrain-derived auxiliary variables went into the development of the model, which predicts 30 m LST for the Antarctic Dry Valleys. 

To model complex relations between terrain, radiation, land cover and LST, machine learning models are used. Multiple algorithms (Random Forest, NN, SVM, Gradient Boosting) are compared to find the best approach for predicting high resolution LST based on MODIS data. Using the best performing model, a daily dataset is created that provides LST for the Antarctic Dry Valleys from 2002 on.