Part of EO for Africa Research and Development unit:
- Training Module 3: Water and Energy Budget (Coordinator: Zeng)
- Online Course 3: Water and Energy Budgets from Space (Coordinator: Zeng)
Author: Roelof Rietbroek
LICENSE: TBD
Water availability on land is critically linked to fresh water sources from rivers and lakes. A thorough understanding of the water budget and its connection with droughts and socio-economic activities, therefore requires modelling and observation of inland waters. However, in situ measurements of river discharge and lake heights may not always be up to date or available. The use of satellite observations is therefore an appealing alternative to monitor inland waters. This training material helps students to get acquainted with the observation principles of radar altimetry. It also helps them to understand the possibilities and limitations which these techniques can offer for the monitoring of lake levels and river heights and discharge.
On completion of this topic, the participant will be able to:
- Understand the measurement principle of radar altimetry, and the concept of retracking
- Understand the concept of a river rating curve
- Execute a jupyter notebook demo which demonstrates an application of Sentinel data for an inland water
- Evaluate the jupyter notebook results in terms of their usability for water budget studies
- OC3 only: Create a geospatial and time visualization of radar altimetry data in an area of interest
- Intro video?
- A: The role of radar-altimetry for the water cycle (articles, movies, show cases), (1 hour)
- B: River heights versus discharge, (1 hour)
- C: Case study: River heights (and discharge?) from Sentinel-6 (2 hours)
- D: DIY Jupyter exercise (4 hours, for the online course)