Version 1
: Received: 30 June 2022 / Approved: 4 July 2022 / Online: 4 July 2022 (08:02:24 CEST)
How to cite:
Machefer, M.; Perpinyà-Vallès, M.; Escorihuela, M.J.; Gustafsson, D.; Romero, L. Challenges and Evolution of Water Level Monitoring towards a Comprehensive, World-Scale Coverage with Remote Sensing. Preprints2022, 2022070037. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202207.0037.v1
Machefer, M.; Perpinyà-Vallès, M.; Escorihuela, M.J.; Gustafsson, D.; Romero, L. Challenges and Evolution of Water Level Monitoring towards a Comprehensive, World-Scale Coverage with Remote Sensing. Preprints 2022, 2022070037. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202207.0037.v1
Machefer, M.; Perpinyà-Vallès, M.; Escorihuela, M.J.; Gustafsson, D.; Romero, L. Challenges and Evolution of Water Level Monitoring towards a Comprehensive, World-Scale Coverage with Remote Sensing. Preprints2022, 2022070037. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202207.0037.v1
APA Style
Machefer, M., Perpinyà-Vallès, M., Escorihuela, M.J., Gustafsson, D., & Romero, L. (2022). Challenges and Evolution of Water Level Monitoring towards a Comprehensive, World-Scale Coverage with Remote Sensing. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202207.0037.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Machefer, M., David Gustafsson and Laia Romero. 2022 "Challenges and Evolution of Water Level Monitoring towards a Comprehensive, World-Scale Coverage with Remote Sensing" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202207.0037.v1
Abstract
Surface water availability is a fundamental environmental variable to implement effective climate adaptation and mitigation plans, as expressed by scientific, financial and political stakeholders. Recently published requirements urge the need for homogenised access to long historical records at a global scale, together with the standardised characterisation of the accuracy of observations. While satellite altimeters offer world coverage measurements, existing initiatives and online platforms provide derived water level data. However, these are sparse, particularly in complex topographies. This study introduces a new methodology in two steps 1) teroVIR, a virtual station extractor for a more comprehensive global and automatic monitoring of water bodies, and 2) teroWAT, a multi-mission, interoperable water level processor, for handling all terrain types. L2 and L1 altimetry products are used, with state-of-the-art retracker algorithms in the methodology. The work presents a benchmark between teroVIR and current platforms in West Africa, Kazakhastan and the Arctic: teroVIR shows an unprecedented increase from 55% to 99% in spatial coverage.A large-scale validation of teroWAT results in an average of unbiased root mean square error ubRMSE of 0.638 m on average for 36 locations in West Africa. Traditional metrics (ubRMSE, median, absolute deviation, Pearson coefficient) disclose significantly better values for teroWAT when compared with existing platforms, of the order of 8 cm and 5% improved respectively in error and correlation. teroWAT shows unprecedented excellent results in the Arctic, using a L1 products based algorithm instead of L2 one, reducing the error of almost 4 m on average. To further compare teroWAT with existing methods, a new scoring option, teroSCO, is presented, measuring the quality of the validation of time series transversally and objectively across different strategies. Finally, teroVIR and teroWAT are implemented as platform-agnostic modules and used by flood forecasting and river discharge methods as relevant examples. A review of various applications for miscellaneous end-users is given, tackling the educational challenge raised by the community.
Keywords
remote sensing; satellite; altimetry; water level; water inland; essential climate variable; database; hydrology
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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