Multi-sensors monitoring method on ice and snow parameters in upstream of Heilongjiang, the northernmost river of China

Abstract Aiming at the dynamic monitoring of the ice cover during the river frozen period in cold region, a real-time snow and ice parameters monitoring system based on the characteristic difference of electrical conductivity, temperature and light intensity was designed, which was used to detect the ice thickness and snow depth in the vertical section direction of the ice cover. In order to obtain the accurate measuring results under the low-temperature, a temperature residual compensation method was proposed to calibrate all of the thermistor units within a wide temperature range from −50 °C to 20 °C. We deployed this system at the testing site of the upstream of Heilongjiang River from 2013 to 2016. The results show the multi-sensors can clearly distinguish the interface of water/ice, ice/snow and snow/air, and the evolution process of ice thickness and snow depth can also be obtained, which are basically consistent with the manual observation results.