Remote Sensing Applications

(i) Watershed Management

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

 Watershed Management
2

 Watershed planning and management

 Essential for the conservation of land and water resources for optimum productivity

 Requires
– Assessment of current resources status
– Modeling to assess the relationship between various hydrologic components
– Planning and implementation of land and water conservation measures etc.

 Physiographic parameters, land use land cover, hydrological parameters etc. are
some of the essential information that remote sensing can supply

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

 Objectives
3

 Remote sensing applications in watershed management

 Water resources mapping

 Estimation of watershed physiographic parameters
 Estimation of hydrological and meteorological variables
 Watershed prioritization
 Water conservation

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

 Water Resources Mapping
4

 Identification and mapping of surface water bodies

 Requires fine spatial resolution for the identification of smaller water bodies

 Optical remote sensing

– Based on the energy absorption in the NIR and MIR bands

– Poor cloud penetration

 Microwave remote sensing

– Based on the energy difference received at the sensor / antenna

– Water provides specular reflection of microwave radiation
– Very little energy is scattered back

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Water Resources Mapping…
5

Landsat ETM+ images of a part of the Krishna river basin in different spectral bands
(Nagesh Kumar and Reshmidevi, 2013)
Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc
Watershed Physiographic Parameters
6

 Images and DEM derived using remote sensing techniques have been used

 DEMs are used for

 Assessment of landforms
 Evaluation of topography
 Extraction of drainage pattern
 Generation of secondary information using the drainage pattern
 Watershed boundary
 Drainage structure of the basin,
 Stream orders, length, density, sinuosity
 Bifurcation ratio, Linear aspects of channel systems etc.

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Physiographic Parameters…
7

 DEM derived using remote sensing techniques

 SRTM DEM : Near-global DEM at 90m spatial resolution and 16m vertical accuracy
 ASTER GDEM: Near-global DEM at 30m spatial resolution
 DEM derived using airborne laser altimeters

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Physiographic Parameters…
8

Stream network delineated from the DEM

ASTER GDEM of a small region in using the flow tracing algorithm included
the Krishna Basin in the ‘spatial analyst’ tool box of ArcGIS

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

 Land Use / Land Cover
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 Land use / land cover identification and mapping

 Based on the difference in the spectral signature of land covers in different

bands
 Using remote sensing techniques, fine spatial resolution and frequent temporal

sampling can be achieved

 Remote sensing helps to study the dynamics of land use / land cover pattern,

and its impact on the hydrologic processes

 Differentiation of closely resembling land cover classes is possible (e.g., crop

classification) with Hyperspectral remote sensing techniques

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Land Use / Land Cover …
10

 Global land cover map can be generated with the help of remote sensing

Global 300 m land cover classification using 22 classes released by the European Space Agency
Source:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ESA_global_land_cover_map_available_online
Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc
 Precipitation
11

 Remote sensing has been used to assess the occurrence and intensity of

rainfall
 Basic concept: Differentiation of precipitating clouds from the non-precipitating

clouds
 Cloud brightness estimated using remote sensing is used to identify

precipitating clouds
 Both optical and microwave remote sensing techniques have been used

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

 Some of the important satellite rainfall products
(Nagesh Kumar and Reshmidevi, 2013)

Program
Spectral bands used Characteristics and source of data
(Organization)

World Weather 1-4 km spatial, and

Watch VIS, IR 30 min. temporal resolution
(WMO) (http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/index_en.html)

VIS, IR Sub-daily
TRMM
Passive & active 0.25o (~27 km) spatial resolution
NASA and JAXA)
microwave (ftp://trmmopen.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/merged)
0.25o spatial resolution
PERSIANN
IR Temporal resolution: 30 min. aggregated to 6 hrs.
(CHRS)
(http://chrs.web.uci.edu/persiann/)
0.08 deg (8 km) spatial and 30 min. temporal resolution
CMORPH
Microwave (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/janowiak/
(NOAA)
cmorph_description.html)
Acronyms
CHRS : Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing,
CMORPH: (CPC) MORPHing technique
NASA : National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA
NOAA : National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
PERSIANN: Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Network
TRMM : Tropical Rainfall Measuring
WMO : World Meteorological
Remote Sensing: M8L1 Organization 12 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc
 Evapotranspiration
13

 Evapotranspiration (ET): Water and energy flux between the land surface and

the lower atmosphere

 ET is controlled by

– Feedback mechanism between the atmosphere and the land surface

– Soil and vegetation characteristics
– Hydro-meteorological conditions

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Evapotranspiration …
14

Remote sensing of ET
 Direct estimation of ET through remote sensing is difficult

 Indirect approaches are used

 Remote sensing is used to measure

 Surface conditions like albedo, soil moisture
 Vegetation characteristics NDVI and leaf area index (LAI)
 Surface temperature

 Data obtained from remote sensing are used in different models to simulate
the actual ET

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Evapotranspiration …
15

Remote sensing data-based ET models (Couralt et al., 2005)

 Empirical direct methods: Empirical equations to relate the difference in the surface air

temperature to the ET
 Residual methods of the energy budget: Both empirical and physical parameterization.

 Example: SEBAL, FAO-56 method

 Deterministic models: Simulate the physical processes between the soil, vegetation and

atmosphere using remote sensing data such as Leaf Area Index (LAI) and soil moisture.
 Example SVAT (Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere-Transfer)
 Vegetation index methods: Use the ground observation of the potential or reference ET.

Actual ET is estimated from the reference ET by using the crop coefficients obtained from
the remote sensing data

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Evapotranspiration …
16

Remote sensing of ET
 Optical remote sensing using the VIS and NIR bands have been commonly used

MODIS Global Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Project (MOD16)

 As a part of the NASA / EOS project to estimate global terrestrial ET from Earth’s land
surface by using satellite remote sensing data
 Provides global ET data sets at regular grids of 1 sq.km for the land surfaces

 At 8-day, monthly and annual intervals for the period 2000-2010

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

 Soil Moisture
17

 Remote sensing techniques are advantageous over the conventional in-situ

methods
– Capable to capture spatial variation over a large spatial extent

– Frequent sampling of an area is possible depending upon the revisit time of the
satellite

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Soil Moisture …
18

Global average monthly soil moisture in May extracted from the integrated soil moisture
data base of the European Space Agency- Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI).
(Source: http://www.esa-soilmoisture-cci.org/)

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Soil Moisture …
19

Remote sensing of soil moisture

 Requires information below the ground surface

 Mostly confined to the use of thermal and microwave bands

 Based on the variation in the soil properties caused due to the presence of water

 Soil dielectric constant, brightness temperature, and thermal inertia are commonly used
 Due to the poor surface penetration capacity of the microwave signals, it is effective only

for the surface layer of maximum 10 cm thickness

 Soil moisture simulation for the entire root zone have been attempted by assimilating
remote sensing derived surface soil moisture data with physically based distributed root
zone soil moisture simulation models.
Example: Assimilation of aircraft-based remotely sensed soil moisture into SWAP model (Das et al.
2008)

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Soil Moisture …
20

Satellite / Sensors used for retrieving soil moisture data

 Passive microwave sensors

– SMMR, AMSR-E and SSM/I

 Active microwave sensors

– Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) aboard the EUMETSAT MetOp satellite

 Thermal sensors

– Data from the thermal bands of the MODIS sensor onboard Terra satellite have been used for
retrieving soil moisture data

 Hyper-spectral remote sensing techniques

– Uses reflectivity in the VIS and the NIR bands

– Changes in the spectral reflectance curves due to the presence of soil moisture are identified

– Multiple narrow bands help to extract most appropriate bands for the soil moisture estimation

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Characterization and Prioritization
21

 Watershed characterization: Involves the measurement and analysis of hydro-

geological, geo-morphological parameters, soil and land use characteristics etc.

 Watershed prioritization: Ranking of different watersheds or sub-watersheds for any

specific application based on the watershed characteristics

 Data extracted through remote sensing techniques for watershed studies include

 Physiographic and morphometric parameters

 Land use / land cover information
 Hydrologic parameters

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Characterization and Prioritization…
22

Examples

 Watershed characterization and land suitability evaluation (Saxena et al., 2000)

– Parameters: land use/ land cover, soil data, slope, and soil degradation status

 Watershed prioritization considering the erosion risk (Chaudhary and Sharma, 1984)

– Parameters: Relief ratio, drainage density, drainage texture, bifurcation ratio

 Watershed prioritization based on the sediment yield index (Khan et al., 2001)

 Prioritization of micro-catchments using morphological parameters (Raju

and Nagesh Kumar, 2012)

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Characterization and Prioritization…
23

Watershed characterization of the Northern United States for water quality risk
Source: http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/futures/current_conditions/soil_water_conservation/

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Characterization and Prioritization…
24

Case Study: Prioritization of micro-catchments in the Kherthal catchment in

Rajasthan based on morphologic parameters
(Source: Raju and Nagesh Kumar, 2012)

Objective:
Prioritize the 25 micro-catchments in the
Kherthal watershed
– For watershed conservation and
management services
– Based on the morphological
parameters

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Description of the morphologic parameters used

Remote Sensing: M8L1 25 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Prioritization- Case Study
26

• Morphologic parameters are interpreted / calculated for all micro-catchments

using

 IRS LISS-III images and

 Survey of India topographic sheets

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Morphologic parameters for the micro-catchments in the
Kherthal catchment

Remote Sensing: M8L1 27 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Watershed Prioritization- Case Study
28

 Prioritization criteria
• Maximization of Drainage density, Bifurcation ratio, Stream frequency ,Texture ratio
• Minimization of Form factor, Elongation ratio, Circulatory ratio

 Methods used
• Compromise programming (CP)
• Technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS)
• Compound Parameter Approach (CPAP)
– Micro-catchments were ranked for the seven parameters individually
– Average of the seven ranks was used as the compound parameter
– Compound parameter was used for ranking the micro-catchments
(More details can be found in Raju and Nagesh Kumar, 2012)
Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc
Ranking of the micro-catchments by compound ranking

Highest priority
micro-catchments in the
Kherthal watershed

Remote Sensing: M8L1 29 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Water Conservation / Rainwater Harvesting
30

Rainwater harvesting : Water from rainfall is stored for future usage

 Effective water conservation measure, particularly in the arid and semi-arid regions

 Highly location specific

 Requires assessment of

 Rainwater harvesting potential of the area (Amount of rainfall and its spatio-temporal
distribution, runoff generation capability , storage capability etc.)
 Physiographic and terrain characteristics (topography, soil type and depth etc.)
 Local socio-economic factors
 Suitability of different rainwater harvesting techniques

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Rainwater Harvesting …
31
 Remote sensing acts as a potential tool to generate the basic information required for

arriving at the most appropriate methods for each area

Remote sensing aided analysis

(Rao and Raju, 2010)
 Various data layers were prepared and
brought into a GIS framework
 Multi-criteria evaluation algorithms were used
to aggregate the information
 Various decision rules were evaluated to
arrive at the most appropriate solution

Capability to provide large areal coverage at a fine spatial resolution

makes remote sensing techniques highly advantageous over the
conventional field-based surveys
Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc
 Conclusions
32

 Remote sensing is a potential tool for generating / extracting the essential

information for the watershed management studies

 Capability to provide large areal coverage at a fine spatial resolution makes

remote sensing techniques highly advantageous over the conventional field-

based surveys in the watershed studies

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

Bibliogrtaphy / Further Reading
1. Allen RG et al. 1998. “Crop evapotranspiration: guidelines..” Irr. & Drain.Paper 56, FAO, Rome.
2. Allen RG et al. 2005. “A Landsat-based energy balance
33 and evapotranspiration model…” Irrig. and Drain.
Syst., 19(3/4), pp 251–268.
3. Bastiaanssen et al. 1998. “… surface energy balance algorithm…” J. Hydrol., 212–213, pp 198-212.
4. Chaudhary, R.S. and Sharma, ED. 1998. “Erosion hazard assessment ….” Indian J. Soil Conser., 26(1): 6-1.
5. Courault D, et al. 2005. “Review on estimation of evapotranspiration…” Irrig. and Drain. Syst., 19, 223–249.
6. Das NN et al. 2008. “Modeling & assimilation of root zone soil moisture…” Remote Sens. Env.., 112, 415-
429.
7. Gibson PJ, Power CH. 2000. Introductory Remote Sensing- Digital Image Processing and Applications.
Routledge Pub., London.
8. Khan MA et al. 2001. “Watershed prioritization using remote sensing …” J. Arid Environ., 49, pp 465–475.
9. Nagesh Kumar D and Reshmidevi TV (2013). “Remote sensing applications in water resources” J. Indian
Institute of Sci., 93(2), 163-188.
10. Neale C et al. 2005. “Irrigation water management …” Irrig. Drain. Syst., 19(3/4), 321–336.
11. Olioso A et al. 1999. “Estimation of Evapotranspiration…” Remote Sens. Environ., 68, pp 341–356.
12. Raju KS and Nagesh Kumar D (2012) “Prioritization of micro-catchments based on morphology” Water
Management- Proc. Institution of Civil Eng., 166 (WM7) 367-380.
13. Rao VV and Raju PV (2010) “Water resources management” In Remote Sensing Applications (Roy PS,
Dwivedi RS, Vijayan D Eds.), National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad.
14. Saxena RK et al. 2000. “IRS-1C data application…” Int. J. Remote Sens., 21 (17), pp 3197-3208
15. Yanmin Y et al., 2010. “Soil Moisture Monitoring Using Hyper-Spectral Remote Sensing Technology” In
2010 Second IITA International Conference on Geosci. Remote Sens., pp 373- 376, IEEE.

Remote Sensing: M8L1 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc

 Thank You

Remote Sensing: M8L1 34 D. Nagesh Kumar, IISc