Exploiting Sentinel 1 time series to monitor the largest fresh water bodies in PR China, the Poyang Lake

摘要

Sentinel-1 is a two satellite constellation providing C-Band SAR data continuity following the retirement of ERS-2 and the end of the Envisat mission, with the prime objectives of Land and Ocean monitoring, having a topic on water detection for supporting water resources monitoring as well as Emergency mapping in the event of natural disasters. A first Sentinel-1 image was acquired over Poyang Lake, PR China, less than 6 weeks after its launch. This allowed comparing the respective capacities in term of water recognition of the former ASAR ENVISAT and the Sentinel data. Then, since the operation functioning of the mission in fall 2014, data are regularly acquired, every 5 and 7 days, and processed in order to derive water bodies' maps and insure the monitoring of this crucial resources, the largest fresh water bodies in China. This demonstrates the great potential of Sentinel-1 constellation for water bodies monitoring, associating relative large swath, great revisit frequency and high resolution.