Application detail
The service provides information concerning small water reservoirs. Water reservoirs baseline maps and their evolution over time can be reliably generated, providing both water surface and volume.
The period and update frequency depends on the satellite sensors used, but using only Landsat data one can have monthly updates at a global scale for reservoirs larger than 1 hectar. In cloudy areas SAR observations are mandatory to ensure a sufficient temporal coverage.
Optical sensors like Landsat and Spot can easily identify reservoirs of size down to one hectar. In cloudy conditions radar sensors can provide the same level of detail, but with slightly reduced accuracy under certain local environmental conditions (wind with waves on the reservoir surface). The final product can be provided with accuracies of better than 90% for both the water surface and volume.
In semi-arid areas of the developing world, rural water supply is increasingly insufficient. Supplying the rural population in semi-arid developing countries with water requires spatially distributed sources of different qualities and quantities of water. Access to clean drinking water is being improved with borehole programs, but the equally important large volume demand for non-drinking purposes is currently not addressed sufficiently.
Small reservoir base map of the Southern Province of Zambia. Credits: NEO
One of the key advantages of small reservoirs is their existence in large numbers, greatly improving the water availability at village level. They are often the only adequate and economically feasible source of large volume water supply for non-drinking purposes and important for economic development and the reduction of poverty. While their small size, existence in large numbers, and widespread distribution leads to many desirable socio-economic effects, the same characteristics make hydrological impact assessments and scientifically sound development difficult.
EO products can be used for planning construction and maintenance of small reservoirs at regional/national scale, as well as the need for irrigation oriented extension services. In addition, it is possible to derive important hydrological indicators from reservoir storage, which may feed into hydrological models and/or famine early warning systems/harvest predictions.
Sentinel-2 will routinely provide high-resolution (10-20) optical images globally with frequent revisits with the potential of replacing the Landsat 5 data. Sentinel-2 aims at ensuring continuity of Spot- and Landsat-type data, with improvements to allow service evolution.. Sentinel-1 will provide temporal coverage in areas of high cloud coverage.
Reference:
ESA, WB, Earth Observation for Green Growth. An overview of European and Canadian Industrial Capability
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