Observing water-level variations from space-borne high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image correlation

摘要

The potential of correlating high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar images to estimate local water-level variations is analysed based on observing the motions of floating structures. By computing range and azimuth offsets on a COSMO-SkyMed multi-temporal data-set in an area of the French Atlantic Coast, displacement signatures were detected in several harbours of the region. They can be associated with specific floating structures, whose vertical motion is mostly driven by tides. Although the image resolution is not the best achievable for the COSMO-SkyMed sensor, comparison with ground-based tide information revealed that the obtained space-borne measurements are consistent with the tide gauges to a decimetric accuracy. Even if the requirements for traditional users of tidal data are not met by the current revisit time of the COSMO-SkyMed constellation, the method proposed here provides complementary measures, which are already well aligned to requirements of users concerned with long-term sea-level variation and river or lake water stocks.