Scalable Water Balances from Earth Observations (SWEO): results from 50 years of remote sensing in hydrology

Tim Hessels, Jeffrey C. Davids, Wim Bastiaanssen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)
150 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Strategic planning of water management at the river-basin scale requires (1) measurement and accounting of individual hydrological processes, (2) quantification of water resources, and (3) their optimal allocation. Scalable Water Balances from Earth Observations (SWEO) is an open-access parameterization enabling automated reporting of water footprints and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators. We present its systematic arrangement and input datasets, and demonstrate its accuracy by independent riverflow measurements. We also review some achievements in remote sensing for hydrology during the last 50 years in quantifying hydrological and water management processes, flows, fluxes and changes in storage from various independent sources; and append mathematical formulations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)866-886
Number of pages21
JournalWater International
Volume47
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Keywords

  • 50 years of remote sensing hydrology
  • internal calibration
  • open-access Earth observation databases
  • rapid water accounting
  • scalable water balance

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