Global Water Surface Dynamics: Toward a Near Real Time Monitoring Using Landsat and Sentinel Data
Abstract
Global surface water dynamics and its long-term changes have been documented at 30m spatial resolution using the entire multi-temporal orthorectified Landsat 5, 7 and 8 archive for the years 1984 to 2015. This validated dataset recorded the months and years when water was present, where occurrence changed and what form changes took (in terms of seasonality), documents inter-annual variability, and multi-annual trends. This information is freely available from the global surface water explorer https://global-surface-water.appspot.com. Here we extend this work (doi:10.1038/nature20584 ) by combining post 2015 Landsat 7 and 8 data with imagery from the Copernicus program's Sentinel 2a and b satellites. Using these data in combination improves the spatial resolution (from 30m to a nominal 10m) and temporal resolution (from 8 days to 4 days revisit time at the equator). The improved geographic and temporal completeness of the combined Landsat / Sentinel dataset also offers new opportunities for the identification and characterization of seasonally occurring waterbodies. These improvements are also being examined in the light of reporting progress against Agenda 2030's Sustainable Development Goal 6, especially the indicator used to measure 'change in the extent of water-related ecosystems over time'.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMGC11C0742P
- Keywords:
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- 0410 Biodiversity;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE