Application to Use SARAL altimetry for water level monitoring over Ramganga reserviour and its correlation with MODIS data

Abstract

Retrieval of sea surface height by performing altimetry on SARAL datasets over Ramganga reservoir is presented in this paper. Satellite altimetry for inland water bodies has evolved from investigation of water height retrieval to monitoring over a past few decades. The purpose of performing altimetry over inland water bodies is to estimate the water level and deal with problems such as flood and reservoir operations. Firstly we located the geographical location of our study region and marked all the track numbers passing over it. Then SARAL datasets specific to the marked track numbers were collected to carry out processing on them. A methodology was followed to process the datasets in BRAT for the sea surface height retrieval over the Ramganga Reservoir which fulfilled all the necessary requirements. Retracking was also applied for precise results. The results were then correlated with NDWI values of MODIS data. SARAL derived sea surface height information for ten different months of the same year was correlated with NDWI information to obtain a relation in the form of a quadratic equation which was used for validating data. The result supports that SARAL AltiKa dataset can be utilized for more accurate water level information over inland water bodies. © 2015 IEEE.