Monitoring water level and reservoir storage volume from satellite images

Abstract

In recent years, new land observation satellites have more and more being launched. Satellite images such as Landsat 8 or Sentinel with good quality and resolution have more options to be used in water resource applications. This research presents results of application of Sentinel images to monitor reservoir water levels and volumes for Ialy, Sesan 4 and Pleikrong reservoirs. The trend of calculated reservoir water levels are suitable with observed values with correlation coefficient of 0.98 at Ialy reservoir, of 0.99 at Pleikrong reservoir and of 0.99 at Sesan 4 reservoir. The results show that Sentinel images can be used to monitor water levels and volumes of reservoirs in hard collected information region in transboundary basins such at the Red River and Mekong River.