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A. Bartsch, M. Doubkova, C. Pathe, D. Sabel, P Wolski, W. Wagner:
"River flow & wetland monitoring with ENVISAT ASAR Global mode in the Okavango Basin and Delta";
Talk: Second IASTED Africa Conference Water Resource Management (AfricaWRM 2008), Gaborone, Botswana (invited); 2008-09-08 - 2008-09-10; in: "Proceedings", ACTA Press, (2008), ISBN: 978-0-88986-765-9; 152 - 156.

Wetlands in semiarid regions such as the Okavango Delta
depend not only on local rainfall but also on external inflow.
Flooding patterns can be estimated if the precipitation and
other hydrological parameters of the contributing area are
known. The water is intermediately stored in the soil and
either evaporates, is taken up by plants or contributes to surface
or subsurface runoff. While spatially continuous high
resolution rainfall data are difficult to obtain, soil moisture
can be derived from microwave satellite data. An approach
for derivation of relative soil moisture on 1km resolution
in semiarid regions has been realized within the ESA Tiger
Innovator project SHARE (Soil moisture for Hydrometeorological
Applications over SADC). Active microwave
data which are acquired with ENVISAT ASAR operating
in Global Mode have been used for the now operational
processing chain. With this work we demonstrate that the
relative soil moisture derived from the ENVISAT ASAR
GM data can be clearly related to river discharge measurements.
Additionally, we show the ability of ENVISAT
ASAR Global Mode to monitor dynamics of wet or inundated
areas as a response to precipitation and soil moisture
variation respectively in the upper Okavango basin.

Remote Sensing, Soil Moisture, Active Microwaves, Wetland, Inundation

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_166689.pdf