2010a Durand

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IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 3, NO. 1, MARCH 2010
Estimating River Depth From Remote Sensing Swath Interferometry Measurements of River Height, Slope, and Width
Michael Durand, Ernesto Rodrguez, Douglas E. Alsdorf, and Mark Trigg
AbstractThe Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a swath mapping radar interferometer that would provide new measurements of inland water surface elevation (WSE) for rivers, lakes, wetlands, and reservoirs. SWOT WSE estimates would provide a source of information for characterizing streamow globally and would complement existing in situ gage networks. In this paper, we evaluate the accuracy of river discharge estimates that would be obtained from SWOT measurements over the Ohio river and eleven of its major tributaries within the context of a virtual mission (VM). SWOT VM measurements are obtained by using an instrument measurement model coupled to simulated WSE from the hydrodynamic model LISFLOOD-FP, using USGS streamow gages as boundary conditions and validation data. Most model pixels were estimated two or three times per 22-day orbit period. These measurements are then input into an algorithm to obtain estimates of river depth and discharge. The algorithm is based on Mannings equation, in which river width and slope are obtained from SWOT, and roughness is estimated a priori. SWOT discharge estimates are compared to the discharge simulated by LISFLOOD-FP. Instantaneous discharge estimates over the one-year evaluation period had median normalized root mean square error of 10.9%, and 86% of all instantaneous errors are less than 25%. Index TermsHydrology, interferometry, radar, remote sensing.
I. INTRODUCTION
IVER discharge denotes the volume owrate of water moving through a uvial channel. River discharge has traditionally been estimated in situ by relating water surface ele-
Manuscript received March 20, 2009; revised August 25, 2009.First published November 10, 2009; current version published February 24, 2010. This work was supported in part by the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program; in part by the NASA Physical Oceanography program; in part by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, under a contract with NASA; in part by the Climate, Water, and Carbon Program of The Ohio State University; and in part by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (Grant NER/S/A/2006/14062). M. Durand is with the Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 USA (e-mail: durand.8@osu.edu). E. Rodrguez is with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA 91109 USA (e-mail: ernesto.rodriguez@jpl.nasa.gov). D. E. Alsdorf is with the Byrd Polar Research Center, School of Earth Sciences, and the Climate, Water, and Carbon Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 USA (e-mail: alsdorf.1@osu.edu). M. Trigg is with the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1SS, U.K. (e-mail: mark.trigg@bristol.ac.uk). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JSTARS.2009.2033453
vation (WSE) measurements taken nearly continuously to periodic measurements of ow velocity and channel cross-sectional area, from which instantaneous river discharge is derived. Stream gages provide the WSE or stage and are located sparsely at individual points along channels. From these instantaneous measurements of discharge and concurrent stage measurements, a rating curve is developed that relates discharge to WSE. The rating curve, or stage-discharge relationship, is then applied to the continuous stage measurements to produce discharge as a continuous derived measurement. As discussed by Alsdorf et al. [1], there have been a variety of attempts to characterize river discharge via remote sensing measurements. One approach is to use airborne [2], [3] or spaceborne [4] measurements to estimate the uvial surface velocity. Another approach relates river width or inundated area to river discharge, either at gaging stations [5], [6] or combined with estimates of shoreline elevations [7][9]. A third approach is used in studies that relate water elevations measured from radar altimeters to discharge, e.g., [10]. A fourth approach is to derive estimates of river discharge from spaceborne measurements of gravity uctuations from the Gravity Recover And Climate Experiment (GRACE) measurements [11][13]. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a swath mapping radar interferometer that would provide measurements of inland WSE for rivers, lakes, wetlands and reservoirs. SWOT has been recommended by the National Research Council (NRC) Decadal Survey [14] to measure ocean topography as well as WSE over land; the proposed launch date timeframe recommended by the NRC is between 20132016. In contrast with traditional radar altimeters, SWOT will directly measure uvial inundated area as well water elevation, with spatial pixels on the order of 10 s of meters. Average revisit times will depend upon latitude, with two to four revisits at low to mid latitudes and up to ten revisits at high latitudes per 22-day orbit repeat period. Although SWOT WSE estimates will provide a source of information for characterizing streamow globally, SWOT is not designed to replace stream gages. Stream gauges can supply timely measurements (e.g., daily or even real-time) and measure discharge in small tributaries draining headwater catchments; thus, a close tie to rainfall generated streamow. In contrast, the SWOT orbit will not supply daily data nor will the mission operate in real-time mode. The instruments spatial resolution limits the ability of SWOT to estimate discharge in rivers having a small width. Streamow estimates derived from SWOT and gages will be complementary. Whereas in situ gages have real-time capability at a single
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DURAND et al.: ESTIMATING RIVER DEPTH FROM REMOTE SENSING SWATH INTERFEROMETRY MEASUREMENTS
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point, SWOT measurements will span all rivers, and measure elevations between gages, but will only provide a measurement weekly, not daily, for most locations. Methods for estimating discharge from SWOT are still being developed. Andreadis et al. [15] used the ensemble Kalman lter (EnKF) to update discharge within the context of a data assimilation scheme. The Andreadis et al. approach (conducted in the context of what has been termed the SWOT virtual mission or VM) was executed as follows: synthetically generated SWOT measurements were assimilated into the variable inltration capacity (VIC) hydrologic model [16] and the LISFLOOD-FP hydrodynamic model [17] for a reach of the Ohio river. River depth was estimated as a state variable, assuming that channel bathymetry and roughness were known a priori.. Another approach, also conducted in the context of the SWOT VM, used a data assimilation system to estimate the slope of the channel bed elevation from seasonal measurements of inundated area [18]. Once the bathymetry was estimated, the river depth and discharge could be estimated. While data assimilation algorithms have the advantage of bringing as much ancillary data to bear on the problem of estimating discharge, they typically rely on ensemble-based estimates of these inputs and thus require signicant computational resources. This high computational expense may have implications for global application of assimilation algorithms. A simpler approach that is less computationally expensive has been outlined based on using SRTM estimates of water elevation and slope in conjunction with Mannings equation by [19], assuming that the river depth is known a priori. In this paper, our goal is to present a method of estimating river depth directly from SWOT measurements, since a priori. depth estimates will not be available globally. We will perform the further step of evaluating the sensitivity of this methodology to differences in SWOT orbits. At this time, it is expected that SWOT will have two operational phases. During the fast phase, the SWOT orbit will repeat every three days, but spatial coverage will be limited; the duration of the fast phase will be between three and six months. During the nominal phase, the SWOT orbit will repeat every twenty-two days, but spatial coverage will be global; the nominal phase will constitute the rest of the mission lifetime. Note that because of the swath sampling, revisits to any given location will occur at least twice during a repeat cycle. Our overarching goal in this study is to characterize how accurately depth and discharge will be estimated. We test this approach as part of the SWOT hydrology VM. Our methodology proceeds as follows: 1) a model of the true discharge, water elevations, widths, and slopes is constructed using a hydrodynamic model; 2) synthetic SWOT observations are generated with realistic (to rst order) error characteristics; 3) these observations are used to estimate river depth and to calculate discharge; and 4) the SWOT measurements of discharge are compared with the true discharge to characterize SWOT discharge accuracy.
II. MODELS, METHODS, AND DATA A. LISFLOOD-FP Model The LISFLOOD-FP model [17], [20] uses a 1-D nite difference hydrodynamic scheme to solve for water depth, velocity, and discharge in channel ow. Although LISFLOOD-FP also includes functionality for oodplain inundation, in this study we only utilize the channel solver in order to focus on developing a retrieval algorithm for in-channel ow. In order to achieve a parsimonious implementation, a rectangular river cross section is assumed. The model uses the diffusion wave approximation to the full Saint Venant equations of ow. If this is written in terms of discharge, where Mannings equation is used to describe velocity for a rectangular cross section and large width-to-depth ratio, we have (1) where is the roughness coefcient, is the river width, is the ow depth, is the bed slope, and is the distance along the channel. Thus, the nal term in (1) represents the slope of the water surface. By taking this term into account, the diffusion wave approximation can be used to model the effects of changes in ow downstream on the ow conditions upstream, including backwater effects. Such changes are manifested in changes in water surface slope, which will be of crucial importance to our estimates of channel depth. B. Study Area, Model Setup and Inputs Our study area is the Ohio river basin, with a total drainage area of approximately 529,000 km [21]. We chose a total of eleven of the major Ohio river tributaries to include in the model; the eleven tributaries and their respective drainage areas from [21] are listed in Table I. From Table I, the contributing area of these eleven tributaries comprises a total of 401,012 km , or 76% of the drainage area of the mainstem Ohio. The remaining 24% of the drainage area is comprised by smaller rivers observable by SWOT, and by streams and lateral inow that SWOT will not be able to measure. We have chosen to work with these eleven rivers in order to achieve a parsimonious model setup, and to demonstrate proof-of-concept. Follow-on studies will include all rivers, and examine which will be able to be characterized by SWOT measurements. In order to model these eleven tributaries in LISFLOOD-FP, estimates of the river centerlines, channel bed elevation along the centerline, and channel width are needed. 1) LISFLOOD-FP Channel Inputs: The Hydro1K dataset was used to provide estimates of the river centerline and channel bed elevation. Hydro1K was derived from the GTOPO30 digital elevation model (DEM) at 30 arc-second resolution [22]. Stream centerlines are derived from the DEM at approximately 1-km spatial resolution as described in [22], and represented as a series of sequential location points (i.e., latitude and longitude). Some of these points have additional data describing the river cross section geometry: width, bed elevation and roughness. The DEM elevation will be used in this study to represent the channel bed elevation. The Hydro1K data for the Ohio river
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TABLE I DRAINAGE AREA OF EACH OF THE ELEVEN TRIBUTARIES INCLUDED IN THE MODEL AS ESTIMATED BY [21], AS WELL AS INFORMATION FROM THE USGS GAGE USED AS A BOUNDARY CONDITION FOR EACH TRIBUTARY: GAGE ID, CONTRIBUTING AREA, AND DISCHARGE AVERAGED OVER THE STUDY PERIOD
Fig. 1. Map of the Ohio river basin is shown; tributaries included in the model are shown in blue, while excluded tributaries are shown in grey. Streamlines are from the Hydro1K dataset. River widths are shown by the relative thickness of the blue lines. USGS gages used for boundary conditions are shown as circles.
basin is shown in Fig. 1. The LISFLOOD-FP model interpolates the latitude and longitude data from Hydro1K to a regular grid; in this case, we use a spatial resolution of 1 km. Thus, the blue streamlines in Fig. 1 show the extent of the study area that is simulated in LISFLOOD-FP. The channel roughness (Mannings ) was assumed to be 0.03 for each channel. The LISFLOOD-FP model requires an estimate of river width for each channel segment. For this study, we use the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) 2001 [23], which was derived from
Landsat5 and Landsat7 imagery [24]. The NLCD classication was used along with the algorithm developed Smith and Pavelsky [25] to extract the river width for all of the rivers in the Ohio basin, resulting in a raster image of the river width. This raster image was intersected with streamlines from the Hydro1K: all river width estimates from the raster image that fell near each segment in a streamline were averaged to obtain an estimate of the width for that segment. The resulting widths are shown in Fig. 1. 2) LISFLOOD-FP Boundary Conditions: The diffusion wave implementation of LISFLOOD-FP requires upstream discharge boundary conditions for each tributary, as well as a downstream depth boundary condition on the mainstem. Note that the mainstem itself provides the downstream depth boundary condition for the tributaries. In this study, we use United States Geologic Survey (USGS) gages to provide the depth and discharge boundary conditions from 1 June 199131 May 1992. The location of each gage used as a boundary condition is shown in Fig. 1. The USGS gage information and mean annual discharge are shown in Table I. Gages were chosen as far downstream as possible, in order to represent the total ow as completely as possible for each tributary; see Fig. 1. From Table I, the gages represent between 67% and 99% of the drainage area of each tributary. As a whole, the gages represent a total of 342,857.4 km , which is approximately 65.2% of the total Ohio river basin drainage area of 525,767.6 km from Table I. The downstream boundary condition thus represents hydrologic processes operating on the entire basin, of which only 65.2% is represented by our boundary conditions. In order to deal with this issue, we calculate a reduced
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downstream water depth boundary condition original boundary condition
from the
roughness estimation at the end of this section. Equation (4) can be recast such that it is linear in and by recognizing that , , and are known and dening (5)
(2) where is the sum of the mean annual discharge at the eleven gages used as upstream boundary conditions (Table I) and is the mean annual discharge from downstream boundary conditions. Equation (2) follows from assuming that Mannings equation holds, and calculating the reduction in depth from a given reduction in discharge, given that width and roughness are constant. Presumably, a signicant fraction of the 35.8% of the drainage area that is not included in this model would produce runoff in channels large enough to be measured by SWOT, though they are not included in this simplied model, as noted in Section II-B. C. Depth Estimation Algorithm Our goal in this paper is to explore a method of estimating river depth from SWOT measurements. The LISFLOOD-FP model assumes a rectangular cross-section, which implies that width is time-invariant. We proceed by making two assumptions: 1) most of the time, for most rivers, the discharge at one point along the channel will not likely be signicantly different than the discharge at another point along the channel a small distance (i.e., several kilometers) away, assuming no major changes in contributing area (i.e., no major tributaries between the two points); 2) most of the time, for most rivers, the effects of downstream changes in ow will not have a signicant effect on the ow upstream or downstream; in other words, the kinematic wave approximation holds. We will refer to these two assumptions as the continuity assumption, and the the kinematic assumption, hereafter; moreover, we will investigate how well they hold for our model setup, below. Note that the continuity assumption is subject to errors due to lateral inows entering a river through channels that are too narrow to be accurately characterized by SWOT, as discussed in Section II-B2. Note also that we do not invoke the continuity assumption if a tributary joins the river that is wide enough to be accurately characterized by SWOT. Given the continuity assumption, we can equate the discharge at pixel and pixel at every time (3) Given the kinematic assumption, we have the matrix contains combinations of the observed , with a number of rows corresponding to the total number of measurement times,
resulting in (6) This can be rearranged to yield (7) where the vector contains the unknown initial depths (8)
. . .
. . . and
(9)
and the vector contains combinations of
. . .
(10)
(4) is the depth at some initial measurement time, and where is the change in water depth at time . Width, slope, and roughness are dened as for (1), and roughness is assumed not , and are all SWOT obto vary in time. Note that , are unknown. The depth at any time servables, and and is given from and . Since our objective in this study is to estimate depth, we will make the assumption that roughness can be adequately estimated from ancillary data; we will discuss
Assuming that there are more than two independent measurement times, (7) represents an overconstrained set of linear equations, which can be readily solved by nding the value of that minimizes the least-squares differences for equations. In order for (7) to be solvable by this method, there must be more than two linearly independent rows in (9); otherwise, will be singular, and will not be solvable. As roughness and width are time-invariant, all temporal variability in will be due to temporal variability in slope. Slope time series variability in the model will be discussed in our results, below. It should be noted that roughness could also be solved for using this approach, although the minimization of residuals required to solve (7) would then be over a set of nonlinear equations, which would be more complex. The depth estimation analysis in (7) will be applied only between pixels if slope time series variability as measured by is greater than some arbitrary the coefcient of variation , and if the matrix is nonsingular. The latter threshold condition will be evaluated by the matrix condition number in the norm; is dened as the ratio of the largest singular value of to the smallest singular value [27] as determined by a singular value decomposition of . The analysis will only be performed if is less than some arbitrary threshold.
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The depth estimation analysis laid out in this section proceeds as follows. For each pixel in the model domain, we rst test whether or not the slope time series coefcient of variation that exceeds . If not, we will estimate depth using pixel the interpolation methods presented in Section II-D. Otherwise, we search the 5-km neighborhood of pixel and dene pixels within the neighborhood that satisfy the condition that ex. (The 5-km neighborhood is dened as ve pixels ceeds upstream and ve pixels downstream of pixel ). If no pixels are found that satisfy this condition, we will estimate depth using the interpolation methods presented in Section II-D. If one or more pixels are found that satisfy the condition, then we implement (6) by choosing pixel from the 5-km neighborhood of pixel . If one pixel is found that satises the condition, then pixel is chosen to be that pixel. If multiple pixels are found that satisfy the condition, then pixel is chosen to be the pixel with the greatest value of . Thus (11) is the number of pixels within the 5 km neighborhood where of pixel that meet the required slope time series condition. Note that in order to avoid violation of the continuity assumption, depth estimation will only be performed for two pixels and along the mainstem if there is not a tributary joining in between the two pixels. D. Interpolation of Depth Estimates There are two issues that could pose a difculty to the method laid out above. For the purpose of clarifying discussion, we dene a river section as a part of a river without tributaries entering. Within the context of this study, each of the eleven tributaries constitute a single section. In contrast, the mainstem is composed of twelve sections, where each section runs from the inow of one tributary to the next. First, it is to be expected that somebut not allpixels of a given river section will meet the slope timeseries variability condition described above. How will the depth be estimated for pixels that do not meet this condition? The second issue is that for some sections of the mainstem Ohio river, there may not be any pixels that meet the slope timeseries variability condition. How will depth be estimated within these river sections? To deal with the rst issue, we perform an interpolation over all pixels for a given section of the river where depth estimates for some pixels were obtained from the algorithm described in Section II-C. First, the discharge at the initial time is estimated for all locations where measurements exist from Mannings equation. Second, the discharge estimates obtained in the rst step are averaged together. Third, it is assumed that the discharge for all locations where no depth estimate is available is equal to the average discharge obtained in the second step. Fourth, the initial depth for locations where no depth estimate is available is calculated from the discharge assumed in the third step. To deal with the second issue, we have available the depth and discharge estimates at the initial time for sections of the river where depth was successfully estimated. We rst construct a power law between discharge at the initial time and
Fig. 2. Ohio basin rivers (streamlines) as represented in the LISFLOOD-FP model are shown, along with representative SWOT measurement swaths from the 22-day 78-degree orbit for ascending (a) and descending (b) passes. The labels near the bottom of each swath indicate the day on which the measurement occurred. For simplicity, only measurements on the rst seven days of the orbit are shown.
drainage area for all rivers and river sections that have unique values of drainage area. We then use this power law to predict the discharge in the sections of the river where no depth estimates could be obtained using the depth algorithm described in the previous section. The depth at the initial time is then calculated from the discharge estimate obtained from the power law. E. Obtaining SWOT Observations SWOT observations are obtained by overlaying SWOT swaths on the LISFLOOD-FP pixels. This is done by rst generating a SWOT ground track based on orbital elements; the ground track is represented as a series of latitude, longitude, and spacecraft heading as a function of time, as measured from the beginning of the orbit period. From this ground track, a swath of SWOT ground coverage polygons is generated from geometrical considerations, and the specied swath width of 140 km. As an example, Fig. 2 shows the SWOT coverage of the Ohio river basin model as represented by the LISFLOOD-FP model described above. After overlaying the swaths, a spatial intersection of each LISFLOOD-FP pixel and each of the ground coverage polygons is performed to determine the precise time at which each pixel is measured. After the measurement times are determined, synthetic SWOT measurements of river slope, river width, and river height are generated at each model pixel by using the LISFLOOD-FP output as the true model states and corrupting the true states with measurement error. In this study, we include only measurement error of river height, as the spatial resolution
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of the LISFLOOD-FP model at 1 km resolution precludes accurate representation of SWOT errors of slope and width. In reality, SWOT pixels will have a spatial resolution in the cross-track direction that ranges from 10 m in the far swath to 60 m in the near swath. Spatial resolution in the along-track direction in the best-case scenario will be 2 m due to synthetic aperture processing. Along-track spatial resolution may have the potential to degrade slightly due to temporal decorrelation of the scene [26], however; studies to investigate these effects are ongoing. In this study, we make the very conservative assumption that SWOT spatial resolution in both along-track will be approximately 50 m, and that and cross-track each of these 50 50 m pixels will be characterized by zero of mean Gaussian random errors with a standard deviation are simulated by 0.5 m. SWOT errors for river height noting that the dominant errors in river height measurements derive from thermal noise, are additive in nature, and can therefore be modeled as (12) where is the number of SWOT pixels that would be conis calculated tained within a LISFLOOD-FP model pixel; individually for each pixel from the river width , , and (13) In order to solve for the initial depth as described above, estimates of are obtained between successive SWOT measurement times from the sum of true water heights and randomly based on (12). generated F. Error Metrics and Evaluation Depth errors will be evaluated by comparing the estimated and true values of at each pixel on each river. Two types of discharge errors are considered here: 1) the difference between estimated and true values at the time of a SWOT measurement will be referred to as instantaneous discharge errors, hereafter; 2) the difference between the monthly average of all instantaneous discharge estimates and the monthly average of the true discharge from LISFLOOD-FP will be referred to as monthly discharge errors, hereafter. For instance, the normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) for instantaneous discharge error will be evaluated for pixel as
observations derived from model results (3.2). We then evaluate the extent to which our assumptions hold (3.3). Finally, we present results from the depth estimation (3.4), the resulting discharge errors, and the sensitivity of the latter to various orbit congurations (3.5). A. LISFLOOD-FP Model Evaluation Because our primary goal in this study was to evaluate a methodology for estimating river depth from SWOT observations, we did not perform any model calibration. In order to verify that the LISFLOOD-FP model set up is producing reasonable results, we compare the discharge predicted at the downstream model outlet and the discharge observed at the most downstream USGS gage available. Note that the drainage-areaadjusted water depth data from this gage are used as the downstream boundary condition for LISFLOOD-FP. The gages used for the upstream boundary conditions represent only 65.2% of the total Ohio river drainage area, and the USGS gage obviously represents all of the drainage area. Thus, in order to assess the timing of streamow predicted by LISFLOOD-FP, we have scaled the USGS discharge time series by the ratio of the sum of the mean annual discharge for each upstream gage to the mean annual discharge for the downstream gage. The modeled and measured discharge time series are shown in Fig. 3; the modeled discharge clearly matches the observed discharge to rst order. Discharge for both the model and gage ranges from 2,000 m s to 4,000 m s between June and December. During December there is a signicant increase in discharge to approximately 17,000 m s for the gage; this peak is somewhat underestimated by the model. Both model and gage decrease to approximately 4,000 m s in mid-February, before showing two peaks in March and April. From this, we conclude that the model is adequately representative of reality to investigate our methods of estimating depth and discharge. B. SWOT Observations Examples of SWOT observations derived from the LISFLOOD-FP model results are shown in Fig. 4. The simulated elevation of the water surface for the Wabash river is shown along with SWOT measurements derived from these measurements as described in Section II-E. Synthetic SWOT measurements are shown on two different days, on 11 November and on 24 November. Water elevations along a ow distance of 228 and 212 km are measured on the two days, respectively, indicating that the 140-km swath is at an angle less than perpendicular for the ow direction at the point where the river was crossed. We would expect that the monthly sampling error ultimately derived from these measurements would be closely tied to the number of times each pixel in the domain is sampled in each measurement cycle or in each month. Fig. 5 shows a histogram of the number of times each pixel was measured within the SWOT measurement cycle. Most pixels are measured either two or three times in the 22-day cycle, while 818 of the 5,860 pixels (14.1%) were measured four times. Over the one-year period, the average number of measurements per month is 3.75, indicating approximately weekly sampling. Note that sampling regimes are latitude-dependent, with (on average) higher latitudes being sampled more frequently.
(14)
is the total number of SWOT observations, and where the total number of days simulated. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
is
We rst present results from the evaluation of the LISFLOOD-FP model (3.1) and show examples of the SWOT
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Fig. 3. LISFLOOD-FP modeled discharge at the downstream model outlet is shown (solid line) as well as the discharge from the USGS gage at the farthest point downstream on the Ohio river (dashed line). Note that the discharge from the USGS gage has been adjusted by multiplying by the ratio of the sum of the mean discharge observed at the upstream boundary condition gages to the mean discharge observed at this downstream gage.
Fig. 5. Number of times each of the 5,860 model pixels is measured in a 22-day cycle with 78-degree inclination angle is shown.
Fig. 4. Examples of the synthetic SWOT height observations (circles) generated from the true water elevation simulated by LISFLOOD-FP (lines) used for the Cumberland river on day 163 (a) and day 175 (b) of the simulation period.
C. Evaluation of Assumptions As described above, our algorithm to estimate depth is dependent upon the assumption that the kinematic approximation can be used to represent the ow processes, and that continuity holds between pixels separated by small spatial distances. We evaluated the kinematic wave assumption by assuming that the change in water depth with distance is zero in (1), and using the true model simulated values of , , , and to estimate discharge (referred to as kinematic discharge, hereafter), then comparing the kinematic discharge with the true model discharge. For both absolute discharge RMSE, and discharge NRMSE calculated using (14), most pixels have very low levels of error due to the kinematic assumption. Indeed, for 98.9% of all pixels from all tributaries, the NRMSE is less than 5%. We evaluated the continuity assumption by comparing the discharge at each pixel with the discharge at a lag of ve pixels. For both absolute discharge RMSE and discharge NRMSE
calculated using (14), most pixels have very small error due to the continuity assumption. For 94.8% of all pixels from all tributaries the NRMSE is less than 5%. As a further test, we calculated the errors due to both assumptions separately during the rst and second half of the year (i.e., during both highand low-ow conditions), and obtained very similar results. Errors associated with the continuity assumption are greater than those for the kinematic assumption; this may be due to the fact that where tributaries join the mainstem, two pixels may have signicantly different contributing areas; this is dealt with as described in Section II-C. Note that we have assumed that streamow does not increase due to runoff processes in for a given river section between tributaries. Future studies of this methodology should examine the sensitivity of the continuity assumption to these runoff processes. Within the context of this study, based on the extent to which the continuity and kinematic assumptions hold, it is expected that the depth estimation algorithm described above will be accurate. Another potential limitation of our method is that it relies on slope time series variability to obtain accurate estimates of river depth. In Fig. 6(a), the values of the slope time series coefcient is shown for the Tennessee river. The low values of variation for chainage 0200 km and from 4001000 km imply that of
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Fig. 6. Coefcient of variation of the slope time series at various points along the Tennessee river is shown (a). The histogram of across all model pixels is shown, for the 96% of model pixels with less than 0.75 (b).
it will be difcult to estimate depth for those pixels. The larger between 200400 km are likely caused by changes values of in the channel slope and channel width at these parts of the river; near the conuence of the mainstem after the large values of 1000 km chainage are likely due to the effects of the mainstem on the Tennessee tributary. Based on the fact that some pixels at least have signicant slope time series variability, it is expected that the depth estimation algorithm described above will achieve accuracy consistent with the underlying assumptions. A values is shown in Fig. 6, for all model pixels histogram of less than 0.75 (95.8% of the pixels). The mean value of with is 0.1586, and 1293 pixels (22%) have a value of greater than 0.25. D. Estimating Depth There was adequate slope time series variability to estimate initial depth for a total of 227 pixels. The depth estimate for the Cumberland river is shown in Fig. 7(a). Depth estimates were derived from SWOT observables using the algorithm described in Section II-C for a number of pixels near the downstream portion of the river, where there was adequate temporal variability in the slope coefcient of variation. For ve sections on the mainstem Ohio, and for the Licking river and Kentucky river, there were no initial depth estimates; the power law approach was used to estimate depth for these pixels (see Section II-D). Relative depth error over all 5,860 pixels from all rivers is shown in Fig. 7(b). The depth errors show a very slight positive bias, with a mean relative error of 4.1%. The standard deviation of the depth error is 11.2%. There are several outliers, with maximum and minimum errors of 89% and 56%, respectively. As noted above, the expected mission lifetime will be greater than three years. The method we have presented used one year of data to achieve the results described above. It is potentially of great value to understanding the availability of data products to know how many measurements are required before the depth will be able to be estimated. In Fig. 8, we show the standard deviation of the depth error as a function of how many days of data were used to calculate the depth. As the time series becomes longer, the accuracy of the depth estimate improves. The standard deviation of the error after 12 months is approximately
Fig. 7. Initial depth prole for the Cumberland river is shown (a). The true depth at the initial time is taken from model output (solid line), the depth estimates are derived from SWOT observables as described in Section II-C (circles), and interpolated to the pixels where SWOT observations are not available as described in Section II-D (dashed line). The relative depth error for depth at the initial time for all pixels is shown in (b).
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Fig. 9. Spatial proles of discharge along the Kanawha river for four days are shown. The true discharge proles are shown as lines, where the solid, dashed, dotted, and dash-dot lines refer to days 285, 286, 287, and 288, respectively. The discharge estimates derived from SWOT measurements on days 285 and 288 are shown as points. Fig. 8. Sensitivity of the standard deviation of the relative error in the initial depth is shown as a function of the number of simulation days used to obtain the depth estimate.
one half the error after 11 months. The depth algorithm was performed for only 204 pixels for the 11-month case, and for 227 pixels for the 12-month case. For the Cumberland river, the algorithm was performed for 16 pixels for the 12-month case (see Fig. 7), but was not performed for any pixels for the 11-month case. This is due to highly variable river slopes during May 1992: for the Cumberland river during May 1992 was greater than averaged over the other eleven months by a factor 5.02. Thus, for the 11-month case, the 648 pixels for the Cumberland river were estimated via the interpolation algorithm described in Section II-D. The mean of the relative depth error for the Cumberland river for the 12-month case was 2.23 cm, but was 62.7 cm for the 11-month case. This bias in the Cumberland river depth estimates is the reason for the change in the overall error from the 11-month to the 12-month case shown in Fig. 8. These results indicate that the method accuracy for estimating depth from the slope time series is generally better than that using the interpolation algorithm if no pixel in a given river is measured. Moreover, the model results for the Cumberland river, and the sensitivity of the depth estimates to slope variability, indicates a need for future studies to explore the possible seasonal dependence of . E. Estimating Discharge Example discharge results for the Kanawha river are shown in Fig. 9. The true discharge shows a large ood wave propagating through the river channel over the course of four days: 285, 286, 287, 288. On day 285, discharge is increasing from 0200 km, but is constant from 200400 km. On day 286, discharge at the upstream boundary has peaked, and discharge is decreasing along the remainder of the river. On day 287, the ood wave peak is around 375 km, and on day 288, discharge is increasing along the entire course of the Kanawha river. SWOT measurements occurred on day 285 and 288, and different parts of the river were sampled. On day 285, the low ow condition was measured, and on day 288, the increasing discharge prole was measured. Thus, a partial picture of the discharge dy-
namics were obtained from the synthetic SWOT measurements. The large amount of scatter in the discharge estimates is due to the random error added to the SWOT height observations. These errors could be partially mitigated by utilizing a low-pass lter; e.g., a polynomial could be tted to the height measurements, following the approach of [19]. There are 366 days of simulation time and a total of 5,860 pixels, resulting in many spatial and temporal series of discharge to examine. We summarize these errors by calculating the NRMSE of the discharge time series at each pixel using (14). Both instantaneous discharge errors and monthly discharge errors (as described in Section II-F) are shown in Fig. 10. Instantaneous discharge errors compare only estimated discharge to true discharge only during the measurement times, with the initial depth estimated using the algorithm presented in Sections II-C and II-D. Monthly discharge errors use true discharge at the SWOT measurement times to calculate a monthly discharge estimate, and compare with the true monthly discharge; thus, no depth error is included in the monthly discharge errors. The median instantaneous discharge error is 10.9%, with 86% of all instantaneous errors less than 25%. Similarly, the median monthly discharge error is 14.7%, with 87% of all monthly errors less than 25%. As a nal analysis, we combined both error due to temporal sampling and depth error, and found that the median error from both error sources combined was 22%. As noted above, the mission will consist of a fast phase (3 day period), and a nominal phase (22 day period). During the fast phase, spatial coverage is not global; only 2,264 model pixels (39%) were sampled. During the fast phase, however, pixels are measured at least once every three days, or approximately ten times per month. As noted above, pixels are measured on average 3.75 times per month in the nominal phase, which is far less frequently. The monthly discharge errors reect this; the median NRMSE from Table II is 3% for the fast phase, and 14.7% for the nominal phase, with a 78 degree inclination angle. We also tested whether or not the temporal sampling was sensitive to the inclination angle of the orbit. The 74 degree inclination angle is the minimum required to capture the outlets of the major Arctic rivers. The 78 degree inclination angle would
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mates. We can examine this more rigorously by using a rstorder Taylor series expansion to approximate the sensitivity of discharge to depth, which yields an estimate of (instantaneous) due to depth errors discharge errors (15) Normalizing this expression by discharge leads to a relative sensitivity of discharge to depth error (16) The implication of this equation is that any errors in depth are multiplied by a factor of 1.67; thus, to attain discharge accuracy of 10%, depth errors must be limited to 6%. This sensitivity is illustrated as the red line in Fig. 11. However, estimates of discharge anomaly will be much less sensitive than absolute discharge to errors in the initial depth. SWOT will yield highly accurate measurements of water height anomaly and (thus) depth . Dening discharge anomaly as the differanomaly ence between discharge at time and time 1, we have (17) The sensitivity of this expression to error in the initial depth is given by (18)
TABLE II MONTHLY SAMPLING ERROR FOR BOTH THE NOMINAL PHASE (22-DAY PERIOD) AND THE FAST PHASE (THREE-DAY PERIOD) OF THE MISSION, AND FOR TWO INCLINATION ANGLES, ASSUMING PERFECT DISCHARGE ESTIMATES
Fig. 10. Histograms of instantaneous NRMSE discharge error (top) and monthly NRMSE discharge error (bottom) are shown.
Normalizing this by
and rearranging gives
(19)
permit further oceanographic study of the Arctic Ocean circulation, and is the maximum allowable inclination angle, due to other considerations. We calculated monthly discharge errors for the nominal phase and for the fast phase for a 74 and a 78 degree inclination. During the fast phase, the monthly discharge error was identical for both inclination angles. During the nominal phase, the median NRMSE was 14.7% and 15.8% for the 78 degree and 74 degree orbits, respectively; the error associated with the 74 degree orbit was thus 7.4% greater. Thus, in the context of this study, the monthly sampling error was not sensitive to the inclination angle of the orbit. The instantaneous discharge results of Fig. 10 (top panel) are essentially an experiment in examining how the depth errors calculated from SWOT observables propagate into discharge esti-
Note that we have removed the dependence of the error metric on slope in order to clearly show the differences between the expressions for absolute and relative discharge error due to depth: (16) and (19) are identical except for the term in square brackets in (19). The term in square brackets is a function only of the ratio between the change in depth at time and the initial depth; given this ratio, the error in discharge anomaly due to depth is a linear function of the error in depth, as shown in Fig. 11. Discharge less than zero; anomaly is most sensitive to depth error for this is intuitive, since if the depth at time is much larger than the initial depth, the effect of the initial condition will be minimized. From Fig. 11, discharge anomaly is much less sensitive to depth error than absolute discharge. For instance, to achieve a discharge anomaly accuracy of 10%, depth errors must be limited to 10.7%, for a relative increase of depth of 25% over the initial time. IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS An algorithm for estimating river depth from SWOT measurements was presented and tested using LISFLOOD-FP model output. The algorithm uses the time series of SWOT measurements to obtain an estimate of river depth at an arbitrary initial time. River depth at other times can then be estimated
30
the Ohio river basin. River depth at the initial simulation time was successfully estimated for the 5,860 model pixels with a mean (standard deviation) relative error of 4.1% (11.2%). From these depth estimates and SWOT observables, discharge was estimated, assuming that roughness was known. Instantaneous discharge estimates over the one-year evaluation period had median NRMSE of 10.9%, and 86% of all instantaneous errors were less than 25%. As a separate experiment, we sampled the true discharge time series at the SWOT measurement times, and used only the sampled estimates to calculate monthly discharge. The median monthly discharge error is 14.7%, and 87% of all monthly errors are less than 25%. Combining both error due to temporal sampling and depth error, the median error was 22%. From this preliminary analysis, we conclude that the depth algorithm presented here has potential for use in developing an estimate of river depth from SWOT measurements. In contrast to depth estimation approaches based on data assimilation presented by [15] and [18], no ensemble hydrodynamic simulations are required, which signicantly reduces the computational expense and may make this approach more feasible for global application. A method to interpolate the SWOT estimates of discharge such as an Optimal Interpolation (OI) scheme [28] has the potential to improve averaged estimates of discharge from the instantaneous estimates, such as the monthly discharge errors analyzed here. Future work will investigate methods to estimate the roughness coefcient and depth simultaneously, will explore the spatiotemporal characteristics of slope timeseries variability, and will explore the role of slope and width errors in discharge estimates. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments and improved the quality of the paper. REFERENCES
[1] D. E. Alsdorf, E. Rodriguez, and D. P. Lettenmaier, Measuring surface water from space, Rev. Geophys., vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 124, 2007. [2] J. E. Costa, K. R. Spicer, R. T. Cheng, F. P. Haeni, N. B. Melcher, E. M. Thurman, W. J. Plant, and W. C. Keller, Measuring stream discharge by non-contact methods: A proof-of-concept experiment, Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 27, no. 4, 2000, DOI:10.1029/1999GL006087. [3] J. E. Costa, R. T. Cheng, F. P. Haeni, N. Melcher, K. R. Spicer, E. Hayes, W. Plant, K. Hayes, C. Teague, and D. Barrick, Use of Radars to Monitor Stream Discharge by Noncontact Methods vol. 42, no. W07422, 2006, DOI:10.1029/WR004430. [4] R. Romeiser, H. Breit, M. Eineder, H. Runge, P. Flament, K. de Jong, and J. Vogelzang, Current measurements by SAR along-track interferometry from a space shuttle, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 43, no. 10, pp. 23152324, Oct. 2005. [5] L. C. Smith, B. L. Isacks, A. L. Bloom, and A. B. Murray, Estimation of discharge from three braided rivers using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery: Potential application to ungaged basins, Water Resour. Res., vol. 32, pp. 20212034, 1996. [6] L. C. Smith and T. M. Pavelsky, Estimation of River Discharge, Propagation Speed, and Hydraulic Geometry From Space: Lena River, Siberia vol. 44, no. W03427, 2008, DOI:10.1029/WR006133. [7] D. M. Bjerklie, S. L. Dingman, C. J. Vorosmarty, C. H. Bolster, and R. G. Congalton, Evaluating the potential for measuring river discharge from space, J. Hydrol., vol. 278, pp. 1738, 2003. [8] D. M. Bjerklie, D. Moller, L. Smith, and L. Dingman, Estimating discharge in rivers using remotely sensed hydraulic information, J. Hydrol., vol. 309, pp. 191209, 2005.
Fig. 11. Sensitivity of absolute discharge (dashed line) and discharge anomaly are shown in the top panel; the circles, squares, diamonds, and triangles refer to zz values of 0.25, 0.25, 0.75, and 1.25, respectively (a). Absolute discharge (b) and discharge anomaly (c) are shown for a pixel near the mainstem Ohio downstream boundary condition, where the circles are discharge estimates and the line is the true discharge.
from the time variability of the SWOT height measurements and the depth at the initial time. The LISFLOOD-FP model was integrated for one year over the eleven largest tributaries of
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[9] G. R. Brakenridge, S. V. Nghiem, E. Anderson, and S. Chien, Spacebased measurement of river runoff, Eos Trans. AGU, vol. 86, no. 19, pp. 185188, 2005. [10] C. M. Birkett, L. A. K. Mertes, T. Dunne, M. H. Costa, and M. J. Jasinski, Surface water dynamics in the Amazon Basin: Applications of satellite radar altimetry, J. Geophys. Res.Atmospheres, vol. 107, no. D20, p. 8059, 2002, DOI:10.1029/2001JD000609. [11] T. H. Syed, J. S. Famiglietti, J. Chen, M. Rodell, S. I. Seneviratne, P. Viterbo, and C. R. Wilson, Total Basin discharge for the Amazon and Mississippi River Basins from GRACE and a land-atmosphere water balance, Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 32, p. L24404, 2005, DOI:10.1029/ 2005GL024851. [12] T. H. Syed, J. S. Famiglietti, V. Zlotnicki, and M. Rodell, Contemporary estimates of Pan-Arctic freshwater discharge from GRACE and reanalysis, Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 34, p. L19404, 2007, DOI:10.1029/ 2007GL031254. [13] T. H. Syed, J. S. Famiglietti, and D. Chambers, GRACE-based estimates of terrestrial freshwater discharge from basin to continental scales, J. Hydrometeorol., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 2240, 2009, DOI:10. 1175/2008JHM993.1. [14] National Research Council, Earth Science and Applications From Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond, 418 pp., Nat. Acad. Washington, DC, 2007. [15] K. Andreadis, E. A. Clark, D. P. Lettenmaier, and D. E. Alsdorf, Prospects for river discharge and depth estimation through assimilation of swath-altimetry into a raster-based hydrodynamics model, Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 34, p. L10403, DOI:10.1029/2007GL029721. [16] X. Liang, D. P. Lettenmaier, E. F. Wood, and S. J. Burges, A simple hydrologically based model of land-surface water and energy uxes for general-circulation models, J. Geophys. Res.Atmospheres, vol. 99, no. D7, pp. 1441514428, 1994, DOI:10.1029/94JD00483. [17] P. Bates and A. P. J. De Roo, A simple raster-based model for ood inundation simulation, J. Hydrol., vol. 236, pp. 5477, 2000. [18] M. Durand, K. M. Andreadis, D. E. Alsdorf, D. P. Lettenmaier, D. Moller, and M. Wilson, Estimation of bathymetric depth and slope from data assimilation of swath altimetry into a hydrodynamic model, Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 35, p. L20401, 2008, DOI:10.1029/2008GL034150. [19] G. LeFavour and D. Alsdorf, Water slope and discharge in the Amazon River estimated using the shuttle radar topography mission digital elevation model, Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 32, p. L17404, 2005, DOI:10. 1029/2005GL023836. [20] M. A. Trigg, M. D. Wilson, P. D. Bates, M. S. Horritt, D. E. Alsdorf, B. R. Forsberg, and M. C. Vega, Amazon ood wave hydraulics, J. Hydrol., 2009. [21] A. C. Benke and C. E. Cushing, Rivers of North America. Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2005, 1168 pp.. [22] Hydro1K Documentation [Online]. Available: http://edc.usgs.gov/ products/elevation/gtopo30/hydro/readme.html [23] National Land Cover Dataset 2001 [Online]. Available: http://www. epa.gov/mrlc/nlcd-2001.html [24] C. Homer, J. Dewitz, J. Fry, M. Coan, N. Hossain, C. Larson, N. Herold, A. McKerrow, J. N. Van Driel, and J. Wickham, Completion of the 2001 National Land Cover Database for the conterminous United States, Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., vol. 74, no. 4, pp. 337341, 2007. [25] T. M. Pavelsky and L. C. Smith, RivWidth: A software tool for the calculation of river widths from remotely sensed imagery, IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 7073, Jan. 2004. [26] D. Moller, E. Rodrguez, and M. Durand, Temporal decorrelation and topographic layover impact on Ka-band swath altimetry for surface water hydrology, Eos Trans. AGU, vol. 89, no. 53, 2008, Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract H41B-0877.
[27] E. Anderson, Z. Bai, C. Bischof, S. Blackford, J. Demmel, J. Dongarra, J. Du Croz, A. Greenbaum, S. Hammarling, A. McKenney, and D. Sorensen, LAPACK Users Guide, 3rd ed. Philadelphia, PA: SIAM, 1999. [28] O. Talagrand, Bayesian estimation. Optimal interpolation. Statistical linear estimation, in Data Assimilation for the Earth System, R. Swinbank, Ed. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 2003, pp. 2136.
Michael Durand received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering and biological systems engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, in 2002, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2004 and 2007, respectively. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus.
Ernesto Rodrguez received the Ph.D. degree in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1984. Since 1985, he has been with the Radar Science and Engineering Section, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. His research interests include radar interferometry, altimetry, sounding, terrain classication, and EM scattering theory.
Douglas E. Alsdorf received the M.Sc. degree in geophysics from The Ohio State University, Columbus, in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree in geophysics from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 1996. He is currently an Associate Professor with the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University and Director of the Climate, Water, and Carbon Program and the Interim Directory of the Institute for Energy and the Environment at The Ohio State University.
Mark Trigg received the B.Eng. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Surrey, U.K., in 1991, and the M.Sc. degree in soil and water engineering in 1997 from Craneld University, U.K. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in geography with the Hydrology Research Group at the University of Bristol, U.K. The topic of his current research is Amazon ood wave hydraulics and oodplain dynamics.

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