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Remote sensing: Hydrology

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Progress in Physical Geography 33(4) (2009) pp. 490–509


Remote sensing: hydrology
Qiuhong Tang,1* Huilin Gao,1 Hui Lu2 and
Dennis P. Lettenmaier1
1
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
2
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku,
Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

Abstract: Satellite remote sensing is a viable source of observations of land surface hydrologic
fluxes and state variables, particularly in regions where in situ networks are sparse. Over the last 10
years, the study of land surface hydrology using remote sensing techniques has advanced greatly
with the launch of NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) and other research satellite platforms,
and with the development of more sophisticated retrieval algorithms. Most of the constituent
variables in the land surface water balance (eg, precipitation, evapotranspiration, snow and ice,
soil moisture, and terrestrial water storage variations) are now observable at varying spatial and
temporal resolutions and accuracy via remote sensing. We evaluate the current status of estimates
of each of these variables, as well as river discharge, the direct estimation of which is not yet
possible. Although most of the constituent variables are observable by remote sensing, attempts
to close the surface water budget from remote sensing alone have generally been unsuccessful,
suggesting that current generation sensors and platforms are not yet able to provide hydrologically
consistent observations of the land surface water budget at any spatial scale.

Key words: evapotranspiration, hydrology, precipitation, remote sensing, snow and ice, streamflow,
water budget, water storage.

I Introduction by an object, whereas active sensors emit

Over the last decade, remote sensing has
come of age as a viable source of observations,
particularly in parts of the world where in situ
networks are sparse. Many hydrological state
variables and fluxes can be estimated through
satellite remote sensing. Most satellite re-
mote sensing uses one of two kinds of sensors:
passive and active. Passive sensors detect
natural radiation that is emitted or reflected
energy to scan objects, and then detect and
measure the radiation that is reflected or
backscattered from the target. Different
sensor types and frequencies in the electro-
magnetic spectrum can provide different
information about water cycle variables.
In addition to electromagnetic sensors,
hydrologists are now using microgravity
sensors to measure space-time variations in

*Email: qiuhong@hydro.washington.edu

© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: DOI: 10.1177/0309133309346650

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 Qiuhong Tang et al.: Remote sensing: hydrology 491
total terrestrial water storage (Tapley et al.,
2004a).
While satellite remote sensing techniques
can, depending on the orbital character-
istics of the platform, make continuous and
up-to-date measurements with wide regional
coverage, they rely on in situ observations
for algorithm development and validation.
A number of field campaigns, like the
First International Satellite Land Surface
Climatology Project (ISLSCP) Field Experi-
ment (FIFE) (Sellers et al., 1992) and the
Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study
(BOREAS) (Sellers et al., 1995), have been
conducted, in which surface and remote
sensing hydrological observations were de-
signed to coincide (see also Jackson et al.,
1999; Davis et al., 2008). In the discussion
below, we emphasize the large-scale applic-
ations of remote sensing, recognizing that
at the smallest spatial scales errors may be
prohibitively large. We review methods of
estimating hydrologic fluxes and state vari-
ables individually via remote sensing. We then
evaluate the potential for integrated remote
sensing observations of the land surface water
budget. In the end, we discuss future direc-
tions for improving retrieval algorithms.
II Precipitation
Precipitation is the primary driver of the
land hydrological cycle, hence accurate pre-
cipitation records are needed to predict land
surface moisture fluxes and state variables.
Although precipitation gauge data are avail-
able over much of the global land area, the
station density and observation quality varies
greatly (Huffman et al., 1997). Surface radar
offers a (costly) alternative to precipitation
gauges; however, its maximum range of ob-
servation is limited by the well-known ‘target
homogeneity’ problem (Woodhouse, 2001;
Tanelli et al., 2004).
For satellite remote sensing, visible (VIS)
and infrared (IR) sensors were first used
to estimate rainfall (Barrett, 1970; Barrett
and Martin, 1981; Petty, 1995). Due to the
presence of clouds, VIS/IR techniques
cannot measure precipitation directly.
Instead, precipitation is inferred from cloud
top temperatures through VIS/IR satellite
imagery (Ba and Gruber, 2001; Kuligowski,
2002; Bellerby, 2004; Yan and Yang, 2007;
Thies et al., 2008). These methods generally
work best in areas where deep convection is
the main cause of rainfall, and worst in areas
where stratiform precipitation dominates.
Unlike VIS/IR techniques, microwave
techniques are more directly related to rain
rates because microwave radiation interacts
strongly with precipitation particles and is
relatively insensitive to cloud cover. Early
algorithms for the retrieval of precipitation
over land using passive microwave (PMR)
sensors focused mostly on the Special Sensor
Microwave Imager (SSM/I) on board the
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program
(DMSP) platforms, and more recently on the
TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) on board
the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
(TRMM) satellite, and Advanced Microwave
Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) on
board the EOS Aqua satellite (Spencer et al.,
1989; Smith et al., 1994; Evans et al., 1995;
Conner and Petty, 1998; Kummerow et al.,
2001; Prabhakara et al., 2000; Grecu and
Anagnostou, 2001; Dinku and Anagnostou,
2005; Stephens and Kummerow, 2007).
Active microwave sensors (radar) can
provide direct estimates of the vertical
distribution of precipitation and allow the
cross-calibration of passive microwave rainfall
estimates. Research on active microwave
detection of rain over land has been based on
coincident observations made by the TRMM
precipitation radar (PR), which is the first
space-based PR (Simpson et al., 1988; Iguchi
et al., 2000; Grecu et al., 2004), and TMI,
both of which fly on the same platform. It
is important to recognize that observations
from Earth-orbiting satellites offer only
intermittent coverage of rain rates over a
given region of interest (currently this is ap-
proximately six to eight observations per
day accounting for all available satellite
platforms). The international Global
Precipitation Measurement (GPM) initiative,
which will be a follow-on to TRMM, will
492 Progress in Physical Geography 33(4)

include a next-generation PR as well as a (Hsu et al., 1999; Sorooshian et al., 2000;

replacement for TMI. In addition, it will
utilize a constellation of PMR sensors, mostly
from the planned National Polar-orbiting
Operational Environmental Satellite System
(NPOESS) fleet.
Microwave observations have been com-
bined with data from VIS/IR instruments to
improve the overall precipitation retrieval
accuracy and to generate high-frequency re-
mote sensing rainfall products (Anagnostou,
2004). Geosynchronous satellite precipi-
tation retrievals are produced through dy-
namic calibration of geostationary IR imagery
and passive microwave rain rate retrievals
Todd et al., 2001; Kidd et al., 2003; Tapiador
et al., 2004; Joyce et al., 2004; Hong et al.,
2004). The algorithms based on both active
and passive microwave data have been de-
veloped to generate rainfall estimates at high
spatial and temporal resolution (Bellerby
et al., 2000; Olson et al.; 2001). There is a
trend towards generation of precipitation
fields for a given spatial grid and temporal scale
using optimal combination of rainfall esti-
mates from multisensor and/or multisatellite
observations (Huffman et al., 2001; Marzano
et al., 2004; Tapiador et al. 2004; Huffman
et al., 2007). Figure 1 shows precipitation

Figure 1 (a) Time series of daily rainfall from PERSIANN-CCS estimates and NAME
Event Rain gauge Network (NERN) rainfall averaged over the network domain in
northwestern Mexico; (b) and (c) the evolution of rainfall diurnal variation as a function
of time over the 2004 summer (JJAS)
Source: Hong et al. (2007).
 Qiuhong Tang et al.: Remote sensing: hydrology 493
estimates from a multisatellite retrieval
algorithm, Precipitation Estimation from
Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial
Neural Networks-Cloud Classification
System (PERSIANN-CCS), compared with
ground-based gauge observations in north-
western Mexico (Hong et al., 2007). It gener-
ally captures the timing of diurnal convective
rainfall while substantial biases exist in daily
rainfall for some large rain events. Mean-
while, global precipitation products that
merge both in situ gauge and satellite data are
now widely used (Xie and Arkin, 1997; Adler
et al., 2003; Huffman et al., 2007), but most
of these methods are not applicable in real
time. A top priority is to characterize errors in
various high-resolution precipitation products
(especially the real-time products) on many
spatial and temporal scales, over varying sur-
faces and climatic regimes. These efforts
have been ongoing under frameworks such
as the Program to Evaluate High Resolution
Precipitation Products (PEHRPP) (Turk
et al., 2008).
III Snow and ice
Snow and ice cover vast, often inaccessible,
regions of the Earth, which influence climate,
culture, and commerce in significant ways
(Rees, 2006). The areal extent of snowcover
can be detected and monitored by VIS/IR
sensors because the reflectivity of snow at
these frequencies contrasts strongly with
that of other types of land cover. Historically,
VIS/IR techniques were limited by either low
temporal overpass frequency (eg, 16 days
for Landsat) or coarse spatial resolution (eg,
1 km for Advanced Very High Resolution
Radiometer data) of the satellite observ-
ations (Rosenthal and Dozier, 1996; Simpson
et al., 1998). A widely used operational snow
product is generated in the form of weekly
snow and ice cover maps for the Northern
Hemisphere at 25 km resolution by the
National Environmental Satellite Data and
Information Service (NESDIS) (Robinson
et al., 1993; Robinson and Frei, 2004) with
records that date to the 1960s. The limitations
of time frequency and spatial resolution
are alleviated to some extent by products
based on the MODerate-resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument
on board NASA’s Earth Observing System
(EOS) satellites, Terra and Aqua, which
can deliver daily snowcover data at a spatial
resolution of 500 m (Hall et al., 1995; 2002).
Another limitation associated with the VIS/
IR techniques is cloud cover. Clouds have
similar VIS/IR signatures as snowcover;
therefore, it is hard to distinguish snow from
overlying clouds with VIS/IR sensors. A
number of researchers have addressed cloud
classification by using multispectral measure-
ments and more sophisticated classification
algorithms (Simpson and McIntire, 2001; Li
et al., 2003). Various methods have been
used to map subpixel snowcover (Painter
et al., 2003; Salomonsona and Appel, 2004;
Bales et al., 2008; Painter et al., 2009), which
is facilitated by the much higher number of
spectral bands available from MODIS than
from AVHRR.
Passive microwave sensors, which are
sensitive to the water equivalent of a snow-
pack as well as its microphysical properties, can
detect a signal from snow both day and night
under (almost) all weather conditions. The
retrieval of snow mass and water equivalent
from passive microwave signals is based on
the radiative transfer processes within the
snowpack (Bernier and Fortin, 1998; Derksen
et al., 2002; 2003a; Tedesco et al., 2004;
Foster et al., 2005; Dong et al., 2005;
Cordisco et al., 2006). There are, however,
a number of limitations of microwave-based
SWE (and snowcover extent) estimation.
Passive microwave radiometers have much
coarser spatial resolutions (typically ~25 km)
than their VIS/IR counterparts. The elec-
tromagnetic signal saturates when SWE
exceeds a threshold, typically 100–200 mm,
which limits use of the method to areas, like
the Arctic, where snowpacks are relatively
thin. Furthermore, the microwave emissions
signature is strongly sensitive to snowpack
microphysical properties – especially grain
494 Progress in Physical Geography 33(4)
size, but also density and temperature.
Furthermore, retrieval algorithms fail when
there is substantial liquid water content in the
snowpack, which changes its dielectric pro-
perties. In addition, where substantial forest
cover is present, it dominates the signal, and
SWE retrievals are infeasible. Also, passive
microwave is not well suited to mountainous
areas, nor to areas with substantial vari-
ations in land cover within the pixel area.
Active microwave (radar) has some
appeal for snow property retrieval because
it can provide much higher spatial resolution
information (~25 m) than passive sensors.
However, it suffers from some of the same
limitations as passive microwave retrievals,
although its higher resolution can alleviate
issues associated with topographic and land
cover complexity. Active microwave has
not been as widely used as passive largely
because data from fewer sensors have been
available in the wavelengths (typically 19
and 37 GHz) that are favoured for snow
retrievals, and because the data volumes are
so much larger. Furthermore, active sensors
can have difficulty discriminating between
wet snow and snow-free ground, which re-
quires high incidence angles. On the other
hand, active microwave systems such as
synthetic aperture radar (SAR) have other
snow-related uses, such as the measure-
ment of the surface velocity and topography
of glaciers and ice sheets (Goldstein et al.,
1993; Fahnestock et al., 1993; Fatland and
Lingle, 1998; Drinkwater et al., 2001; Eldhuset
et al., 2003).
There is a trend toward using optimal
combinations of estimates from multisensor
and/or multisatellite observations to gen-
erate large-scale snow data (Romanov et al.,
2000; Derksen et al., 2003b). For example,
an Interactive Multi-Sensor Snow and Ice
Mapping System (IMS) is used by NOAA
to produce daily snowcover manually at a
spatial resolution of 4 km; it utilizes snow
information from a variety of satellite data
(Ramsay, 1998; Helfrich et al., 2007). NOAA
has also developed an automated snowcover
mapping system that uses VIS/IR and passive
microwave data (Romanov et al., 2000;
2003). The passive microwave SWE product
is blended with a VIS/IR multisensor snow-
cover product (Armstrong and Brodzik,
2005; Kongoli et al., 2007; Foster et al.,
2008). An example of the blended Advanced
Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) SWE-
IMS product is shown in Figure 2 (Kongoli
et al., 2007). Using the IMS masks erroneous
or questionable signals in the pre-blended
AMSU SWE. Future enhancements of the
IMS snow product will include use of sensors
scheduled to fly on future satellites such as
the polar orbiting NPOESS and the geosta-
tionary GOES-R (Helfrich et al., 2007).
IV Soil moisture
Soil moisture modulates the exchange of
moisture and energy between the land
surface and the atmosphere. Both passive
and active microwave remote sensing
hold promise, subject to the limitation that
penetration depths are a fraction of the
wavelength (hence typically at most a few
cm). Furthermore, long wavelengths are
required to avoid confounding of the signal
with vegetation moisture. Even at L-band,
soil moisture estimates are limited to areas
with vegetation biomass less than about 5
kg/m2, hence precluding estimates in most
forested areas.
Although empirical methods are still used
sometimes, radiative transfer-based methods
are increasingly favoured for both passive
and active sensors. Although it has long been
recognized that microwave sensors oper-
ating at L-band (1–2 GHz) provide the best
opportunity to retrieve soil moisture infor-
mation remotely, all currently available
passive microwave sensors operate at con-
siderably higher frequencies (>6 GHz).
Surface soil moisture retrievals are inevit-
ably limited in their spatial and temporal
coverage by the orbital characteristics of dif-
ferent platforms. Some attempts have been
made to assemble long-term historical data
sets from multisensor or/and multisatellite
 Qiuhong Tang et al.: Remote sensing: hydrology 495

Figure 2 Example of blended Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) SWE-

IMS product retrievals over the Northern Hemisphere on 15 February 2006. The left-
hand image depicts the blended SWE, and the right-hand image depicts coverage of
blended and unblended areas
Source: Derived from Kongoli et al. (2007).

observations (Owe et al., 2008), although PR observations to estimate surface soil

such products (which are based primarily
on passive sensors at C-band and longer
wavelengths) are inevitably limited to areas
with relatively sparse vegetation cover.
Two types of active microwave sensors
have been used to retrieve surface soil
moisture: SAR and scatterometry. Most SAR
satellites operate at C-band. C-band returns
are sensitive to vegetation, surface roughness
and soil dielectric constant. By using a change
detection approach, Wagner et al. (2003)
derived multiannual surface soil moisture
from the ERS scatterometer. Nonetheless,
operational surface soil moisture products
from active microwave remote sensing are
not yet available (Wagner et al., 2007).
Combining multisensor or/and multi-
satellite observations from passive and active
microwave sensing promises improved sur-
face soil moisture estimates. Such strategies
have been tested in several field experi-
ments (Ulaby et al., 1983; O’Neill et al.,
1996; Chauhan, 1997; Njoku et al., 2002;
Bolton et al., 2003). Lee and Anagnostou
(2004) combined TRMM/TMI and TRMM/
moisture and vegetation properties. Narayan
and Lakshmi (2008) investigated an approach
that fused radar data with radiometer-based
soil moisture estimates, with the intent of in-
creasing the spatial resolution of the resulting
soil moisture product relative to what could
be achieved with a PMR-based product
alone. Chauhan et al. (2003) and Merlin et al.
(2005) investigated an approach based on
synthesis of PMR, IR, and visible remote
sensing data.
The absence of low-frequency data will
soon be alleviated by the launch (expected
2009) of the European Space Agency (ESA)
Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission
(Kerr et al., 2001), which carries an L-band
PMR instrument. NASA is expected to fol-
low within five years with the launch of a
combined L-band PMR and L-band radar on
board its Soil Moisture Active and Passive
(SMAP) mission (Entekhabi et al., 2008).
V Evapotranspiration
Over most of the global land surface, evapo-
transpiration (ET) is the second largest (after
496 Progress in Physical Geography 33(4)
precipitation) component of the land surface
water cycle. Direct observation of ET, using
methods such as Bowen ratio and eddy cor-
relation systems (Brotzge and Crawford,
2003) and soil lysimeters (Yang et al., 2000), is
difficult and is limited by land surface hetero-
geneity and the dynamic nature of the heat
transfer processes at field or landscape scales.
Remote sensing methods cannot measure
ET directly. However, a number of ap-
proaches have attempted to calculate ET
from remotely sensed estimates of surface
energy fluxes, surface temperature, and
vegetation properties.
One such approach uses satellite-based
measurements of surface temperature (Ts)
and vegetation indices (VI) to estimate ET
(Jackson et al., 1977; Price, 1982; Nagler
et al., 2007; Glenn et al., 2007). In general, VI,
such as the normalized difference vegetation
index (NDVI) (Myneni et al., 1995), is related
to Ts, as higher ET tends to be associated with
lower Ts (Nemani and Running, 1989; Carlson
et al., 1995; Nishida et al., 2003). Various
VI-Ts relationships have been widely used to
compute water stress indices and ET (Gillies
et al., 1997; Jiang and Islam, 2001; 2003).
The latent heat flux (ie, ET) can also be
inferred as a residual in the surface energy
balance using remotely sensed information
such as VI, Ts, surface albedo, emissivity,
reflectance, and land cover (eg, Belward
et al., 1999; Wan et al., 2004). Based on
this strategy, a number of algorithms have
been developed for mapping regional ET
(Bastiaanssen et al., 1998; 2005; Gellens-
Meulenberghs, 2000; Roerink et al., 2000;
Su, 2002; Loheide and Gorelick, 2005; Allen
et al., 2007). Another way to estimate ET is
to use the Penman-Monteith equation (Allen
et al., 1998) with remote sensing data as
primary inputs (Moran et al., 1996; Mauser
and Schädlich, 1998; Granger, 2000; Cleugh
et al., 2007). Many of these methods make
some use of in situ data, as a few key variables
(such as surface wind) are not available via
remote sensing. The residual energy method
was reviewed by Gowda et al. (2007) and
the viability of ET estimates across different
spatial scales was reviewed by Verstraeten
et al. (2008).
Because many regional ET algorithms
are based on VI, Ts, and surface radiative
fluxes (Kalma et al., 2008), multisensor and/
or multisatellite observations are required.
Operational ET estimation using such
methods also requires information about the
diurnal cycle of surface radiative fluxes. Since
polar orbiting satellites only provide one or
two daily overpasses, many methods have
to merge ground-based surface and atmos-
pheric observations with remote sensing
information (Mu et al., 2007; Leuning et al.,
2008). Alternatively, diurnal radiative fluxes
can be retrieved from geostationary satel-
lites (Tang et al., 2009b). MODIS/SRB ET,
which uses MODIS land surface information
and Geostationary Operational Environ-
mental Satellites (GOES) surface radiation
budget (SRB) products, agrees favourably
with Bowen ratio observations for both
clear-sky and cloudy conditions, suggesting
that cloud effects on radiation partitioning
are reasonably well accounted for by the
GOES radiative fluxes (see Figure 3). The
main limitations for estimating regional scale
ET from remote sensing techniques are the
retrieval accuracy of land surface variables
and fluxes, and the spatial heterogeneity and
scaling issues (Li et al., 2009).
VI Water storage and water level
Monitoring of terrestrial water storage at
large scales (greater than about 300,000
km2) became possible with the launch of the
Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
(GRACE) in 2002 (Tapley et al., 2004a;
2004b; Lettenmaier and Famiglietti, 2006).
Using Global Positioning System (GPS) and
a microwave ranging system, GRACE infers
Earth’s gravity field through highly accurate
measurements of the distance between a pair
of satellites. Over land the variation of the
gravity field is inferred as monthly changes
in the geoid, almost all of which are related
to variations in water stored in various forms
 Qiuhong Tang et al.: Remote sensing: hydrology 497

Figure 3 Comparisons of daily mean ET from Bowen ratio observation (KL03 site),
MODIS/SRB approach. (a) Time series and (b) scatterplot comparisons at KL03 site in
a non-irrigated cropland. The blue dots in (b) indicate clear-sky conditions
Source: Replotted from Tang et al. (2009b).

at the surface and subsurface. These forms
include rivers, reservoirs, lakes, soil moisture,
snow water, and groundwater. Techniques
for constructing spatial averaging kernels
are used to extract the storage from a set of
Stokes coefficients in a truncated spherical
harmonic expansion of the geoid (Chambers,
2006; Swenson and Wahr, 2002; Swenson et
al., 2003). At a spatial scale of about 300,000
km2 (and, importantly, for more or less arbitrary
shapes, eg, river basins), the GRACE water
storage accuracy is about 1 cm (Swenson and
Wahr, 2003; Swenson et al., 2003).
GRACE data have been used in a number
of studies of hydrological cycle, through
the monitoring of changes in gravity with
groundwater and ice caps, and of the ocean
thermohaline circulation, through the moni-
toring of spatial variations in ocean water
mass. These applications include: terrestrial
water storage (Syed et al., 2008), El Niño
and La Niña analysis (Morishita and Heki,
2008), land surface model evaluation and
improvement (Swenson and Milly, 2006;
Niu and Yang, 2006; Hasan et al., 2008),
basin-scale water budget (Swenson and
Wahr, 2006; Syed et al., 2007; Wang et al.,
2007; Awange et al., 2008; Crowley et al.,
2008), groundwater estimation (Yeh et al.,
2006; Niu et al., 2007b; Rodell et al., 2007),
snow mass retrieval (Niu et al., 2007a),
sea-level variations (Lombard et al., 2007),
and changes in the Greenland ice sheet
(Chen et al., 2006; Velicogna and Wahr,
2006). As a follow-on mission of the GRACE
satellites, the newly launched ESA Gravity
field and steady-state Ocean Circulation
Explorer (GOCE) (Klees et al., 2000) is
expected to improve the knowledge of the
Earth’s gravity field and geoid models to the
measurement and understanding of sea-level
change (Woodworth and Gregory, 2003).
Fresh water storage in lakes, rivers, and
reservoirs is essential for life. The dynamics
of fresh water levels are needed to infer the
effects of variations in water storage on land
surface water budgets (Alsdorf et al., 2007).
Fresh water level can be measured from space
using radar altimeters or interferometric SAR
(InSAR) (Alsdorf and Lettenmaier, 2003;
498 Progress in Physical Geography 33(4)
Alsdorf et al., 2007). Originally designed
for studying the open ocean and ice sheets,
altimeters determine the distance from a
satellite platform to a target water surface by
measuring the satellite-to-surface round-trip
time of either a Light Detection and Ranging
(LiDAR) or radar pulse. The water level is the
difference between the satellite’s position in
orbit (with respect to an arbitrary reference
surface) and the satellite-to-surface range
(Chelton et al., 2001). Although the first
satellite-borne altimeters were launched
in the 1970s and 1980s, it was not until the
1990s that radar altimeters like ERS-1 and
TOPEX/POSEIDON were able to provide
some information about very large lakes
and reservoirs globally (Birkett, 1995; 1998;
Birkett and Mason, 1995). Second gener-
ations of altimeters, which are currently
operational, include Jason-1, Jason-2, ERS-2,
GFO, and Envisat. The resulting radar alti-
meter data have been used to estimate sur-
face water storage and its variations by
Alsdorf et al. (2001), Birkett et al. (1999;
2002), Coe and Birkett (2004) and Cretaux
and Birkett (2006). Other altimetric satel-
lites are scheduled for launch within the
next few years, including HY-2A by China,
Saral/Altika by India, and Sentinel-3A and
CRYOSAT-2 by ESA.
A key limitation of all current and planned
altimetry missions, aside from Surface Water
Ocean Topography (SWOT; see below), is
that the instruments are nadir looking, which
means that the data provided are for narrow
tracks, rather than swaths (images). Thus,
only a small fraction of the Earth’s largest
lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, and rivers are ob-
served. Furthermore, revisit times for some
instruments are quite long – for instance, 35
days in the case of ERS-2.
Many of the limitations of current gener-
ation altimeters with respect to the size of
surface water bodies measured and revisit
times will be relaxed by the planned SWOT
mission (Alsdorf and Lettenmaier, 2003;
Alsdorf et al., 2007). The SWOT mission
will use a Ka-band Radar Interferometer
(KaRIN), which will provide data over a 100
km wide swath, with revisit times averaging
about 10.5 days at the equator, and as little as
3 days at high latitudes. SWOT will provide
centimetric scale accuracy for measure-
ments of water surface elevation over inland
water bodies with surface areas greater than
about 1 km, and will hence vastly increase the
number of water bodies for which altimeric
information is available relative to current
generation track altimeters. Exploratory
results for this strategy using synthetic data
have been encouraging (Lee et al., 2008).
VII Streamflow
Streamflow is the dominant mechanism by
which moisture is transported from the global
land areas to the ocean. It provides most of
the water used for municipal and industrial
supply, irrigation, energy production, and
many other purposes. Nonetheless, in situ
streamflow observations are not well distri-
buted spatially, and small to intermediate-
sized rivers over much of the globe are cur-
rently not monitored (Alsdorf et al., 2003).
Unfortunately, at present, while remotely
sensed data have been used to determine
areas covered by lakes, rivers, and flood and
wetland inundation (Rango and Anderson,
1974; Barton and Bathols, 1989; Smith et al.,
1996; Smith, 1997; Frazier et al., 2003; French
et al., 2006; Powell et al., 2008), satellite re-
mote sensing cannot directly measure stream
discharge – that is, the volume of water
flowing through a river cross-section during
a specified time interval. Some attempts
have been made to estimate river discharge
indirectly through the use of hydrological
models, with some of the forcing variables
estimated by remote sensing (Schultz, 1996).
An alternative is to use hydraulic relation-
ships between river characteristics that can
be observed by satellites and gauge measured
river discharge (Kinzel et al., 2007; Slatton
et al., 2007). While remote sensing is not
yet able to estimate water depths (Durand
et al., 2009, describe one possible approach),
some exploratory studies for large rivers
 Qiuhong Tang et al.: Remote sensing: hydrology 499
have successfully estimated water surface
elevation changes using Geosat (Koblinsky
et al., 1993), JERS-1 (Alsdorf et al., 2001),
and TOPEX/POSEIDON (Birkett, 1998;
Birkett et al., 2002; Coe and Birkett, 2004)
(see section VI). Some attempts have been
made to use hydraulic information obtained
from satellite data to estimate statistics of
river discharge estimation (Smith et al., 1995;
1996; 2005; Bjerklie et al., 2003; 2005; Zhang
et al., 2004; Xu et al., 2004; Kouraev et al.,
2004; Smith and Pavelsky, 2008; Biancamaria
et al., 2009). However, it is not yet possible
to estimate time varying river discharge solely
from satellite data.
The planned SWOT satellite mission
(Alsdorf and Lettenmaier, 2003; Alsdorf
et al., 2007) is designed to infer river dis-
charges from remotely sensed river hydro-
logic characteristics. SWOT will provide
highly accurate river surface slope informa-
tion (to within about one microradian over
river lengths of about 10 km), in addition to
information about water surface elevations
and inundated areas for rivers with widths
greater than about 100 m. This information,
in conjunction with river hydrodynamics
models, is expected to allow the discharge
of some medium and large rivers to be esti-
mated solely via remote sensing (for details,
see Andreadis et al., 2007).
VIII Water budget
Balancing the land surface water budget
at continental scales is crucial for climate
studies. The mass conservation equation for
surface water can be written as:
ds
=P−E−R (1)
dt
where dS/dt is the change of water storage
with respect to time, P is precipitation, E is
evapotranspiration, and R is river runoff.
Obtaining accurate values for the terms
in the water balance equation is difficult
at large scales – both in situ observations
and land surface modelling have major
limitations. Even for the very few areas
where all components can be observed
through in situ measurements, the water
budget often does not close (Pan and Wood,
2006). While land surface models construct
water balance closure and consistency,
their results are highly dependent on model
physics and the quality of the forcing data
(primarily precipitation and downward sur-
face radiation). Such observational and/or
modelling limitations are especially significant
over data-sparse regions.
As outlined above, the key terms in the
water balance equation can now be ob-
served through satellite remote sensing, and
more research is beginning to focus on the
possibility of estimating large-scale water
budgets solely from spaceborne measure-
ments (Sheffield et al., 2009; Gao et al., 2009).
This is a complex undertaking, however, be-
cause the remotely sensed terms come from
independent sensors and retrieval algorithms.
Furthermore, they are often inconsistent in
terms of spatial and temporal resolution, as
well as in their relative errors. As a result, the
estimated surface water budget often does
not close. For instance, over the Mississippi
River basin, Sheffield et al. (2009) found that
the uncertainties in the individual budget
components are generally larger than the (in
situ observations of) streamflow (Figure 4).
Over nine selected basins in the contin-
ental USA, Gao et al. (2009) explored using
different combinations of remotely sensed
products to close the water budget. The
results suggest that current generation sen-
sors and platforms are not yet able to pro-
vide consistent data about the land surface
water budget at large scales.
As a result of these complications, water
budget studies utilizing remotely sensed
data are often performed by combining
observations with model output. One such
approach uses either water storage or evapo-
transpiration derived from remote sensing
data in conjunction with surface observ-
ations of precipitation and runoff to solve the
water balance equation (Rodell et al., 2004;
500 Progress in Physical Geography 33(4)

Figure 4 Time series of Mississippi River streamflow from USACE observations

(black line), and three estimates calculated as residuals of the land water budget: (red)
using the remote sensing estimates of P (from TRMM and CMORPH), ET (from RS-
PM) and change of water storage (from GRACE); (blue) using bias corrected versions
of the RS precipitation data; and (green) using the VIC model simulation. The USACE
streamflow is shifted earlier by 30 days to reflect the average travel time from an
upstream point to the Mississippi River at Vicksburg
Source: Sheffield et al. (2009).

Tang et al., 2009a). More formally, remote
sensing observations can be merged with
land surface models using data assimilation
techniques (Reichle, 2008).
IX Discussion and conclusions
While all the major hydrological variables can
be measured or estimated using remotely
sensed data, improved accuracy and con-
sistency are crucial for maximizing their use
in hydrological studies. Our vision of the
pathway that can, and we believe should, be
taken is as follows.
(1) Enhance technology. The quality of
remote sensing products critically relies
on sensor development. For instance,
long wavelength sensors are essential to
the estimation of soil moisture so as to
penetrate vegetation canopies and to
provide useful measurement depths in
the soil column. This in turn requires
relatively large antennae. Hence antenna
technology is directly related to improved
remote sensing observations. The
GRACE microgravity mission has demon-
strated the capability to provide informa-
tion about total water storage variations at
subcontinental scales. Yet its application
to hydrological problems is still limited
by its coarse spatial resolution. More ac-
curate methods of estimating the satellite
baseline will be required to improve the
spatial resolution of follow-on missions.
(2) Improve the physical basis for retrieval
algorithms. Better understanding of the
 Qiuhong Tang et al.: Remote sensing: hydrology 501
microphysical relationships underlying
radiative properties (passive and active)
in the microwave is needed. For instance,
more fundamental research is needed to
understand how to characterize those
aspects of precipitation microphysics
that underlie rain rate retrievals.
(3) Improve land surface parameterizations
at large scales. Many parameters that
are used in physical retrieval algorithms
(eg, vegetation parameters in soil moi-
sture algorithms, and snow grain para-
meter in SWE algorithms) were derived
from relatively small numbers of
samples collected at local scales or in the
laboratory. These parameters are often
applied over large domains, and their re-
presentativeness is rarely questioned.
(4) Improve consistency and/or transfer-
ability among sensors and/or satellites.
Estimates of hydrological quantities often
require satellite-based estimates of more
than one variable. For example, in the
cases of ET estimation, the inputs (eg,
downward solar and longwave radiation,
surface temperature, and vegetation
properties) are from different sensors
and/or satellites with much different
orbital characteristics, revisit times, and
errors. There is a need, first, to under-
stand the nature of errors that result from
using different sources of satellite data
and, second, to develop approaches that
reduce overall errors when merging pro-
ducts from various spatial and temporal
scales/resolutions.
(5) Test and evaluate remote sensing pro-
ducts. In most cases, testing and evalu-
ation (often referred to, somewhat
inaccurately, as ‘ground truthing’) is
best achieved through intensive field
campaigns. Field campaigns like FIFE
(Sellers et al., 1992) and BOREAS
(Sellers et al., 1995) provided a wealth
of information about land surface dy-
namics, but they pre-dated most of the
sensors that provide useful hydrological
information, and across the globe space
agencies need to rethink the nature of,
and need for, intensive field campaigns in
the context of hydrologic remote sensing.
(6) Satellite remote sensing offers a frame-
work to better understand large-scale
hydrology without the constraints of
traditional local-scale observations.
Great strides have been made in the last
decade with the launch of research plat-
forms such as Terra and Aqua, TRMM,
and operational platforms such as GOES
and the DMSP series, as well as many
others. More effort is needed, however,
to reduce the uncertainty in remote
sensing products, and to promote their
use in hydrological applications.
Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper was sup-
ported by NASA Grant NNSO6AA78G to
the University of Washington. Thanks are
due to Elizabeth Clark of the Land Surface
Hydrology Group, University of Washington,
for her comments and editorial advice.
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