Estimation of River Discharge using Multi-Mission Satellite Altimetry and Optical Remote Sensing Imagery

Despite increasing interest in monitoring the global water cycle, the availability of in-situ discharge time series is decreasing. However, this lack of ground data can be compensated by using remote sensing techniques to observe river discharge.

In this contribution, a new approach for estimating the discharge of large rivers by combining various long-term remote sensing data with physical flow equations is presented. For this purpose, water levels derived from multi-mission satellite altimetry and water surface extents extracted from optical satellite images are used, both provided by DGFI-TUM’s “Database of Hydrological Time series of Inland Waters” (DAHITI, https://dahiti.dgfi.tum.de). The datasets are combined by fitting a hypsometric curve in order to describe the stage-width relation, which is then used to derive the water level for each acquisition epoch of the long-term multi-spectral remote sensing missions. In this way, the chance of detecting water level extremes is increased and a bathymetry can be estimated from water surface extent observations. Below the minimum hypsometric water level, the river bed elevation is estimated using an empirical width-to-depth relationship in order to determine the final cross-sectional geometry. The required flow gradient is computed based on a linear adjustment of river surface slope using all altimetry-observed water level differences between synchronous measurements at various virtual stations along the river. The roughness coefficient is set based on geomorphological features quantified by adjustment factors. These are chosen using remote sensing data and a literature decision guide.

Within this study, all parameters are estimated purely based on remote sensing data, without using any ground data. In-situ data is only used for the validation of the method at the Lower Mississippi River. It shows that the presented approach yields best results for uniform and straight river sections. The resulting normalized root mean square error for those targets varies between 10% to 35% and is comparable with other studies.