Estimation of stream flow discharge using the satellite synthetic aperture radar images at the mid to small size streams

Abstract

This study suggests a novel approach of estimating stream flow discharge using the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images taken from 2015 to 2017 by European Space Agency Sentinel-1 satellite. Fifteen small to medium sized rivers in the Han River basin were selected as study area, and the SAR satellite images and flow data from water level and flow observation system operated by the Korea Institute of Hydrological Survey were used for model construction. First, we apply the histogram matching technique to 12 SAR images that have undergone various preprocessing processes for error correction to make the brightness distribution of the images the same. Then, the flow estimation model was constructed by deriving the relationship between the area of the stream water body extracted using the threshold classification method and the in-situ flow data. As a result, we could construct a power function type flow estimation model at the fourteen study areas except for one station. The minimum, the mean, and the maximum coefficient of determination (R2) of the models of at fourteen study areas were 0.30, 0.80, and 0.99, respectively.