Hydrological Sciences Journal

ISSN: 0262-6667 (Print) 2150-3435 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/thsj20

Producing time series of river water height by

means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative
study

Emmanuel Roux , Joecila Santos da Silva , Augusto Cesar Vieira Getirana ,

Marie-Paule Bonnet , Stéphane Calmant , Jean-Michel Martinez & Frédérique
Seyler

To cite this article: Emmanuel Roux , Joecila Santos da Silva , Augusto Cesar Vieira Getirana ,
Marie-Paule Bonnet , Stéphane Calmant , Jean-Michel Martinez & Frédérique Seyler (2010)
Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative
study, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55:1, 104-120

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02626660903529023

Published online: 11 Mar 2010.

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 104 Hydrological Sciences Journal – Journal des Sciences Hydrologiques, 55(1) 2010

THSJ

Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite

radar altimetry—a comparative study

Emmanuel Roux1, Joecila Santos da Silva3,4, Augusto Cesar Vieira Getirana2,3, Marie-Paule Bonnet2,
Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study

Stéphane Calmant4, Jean-Michel Martinez2 & Frédérique Seyler1

1
IRD, US140 ESPACE, Centre IRD de Guyane, BP165, Route de Montabo, 97323 Cayenne Cedex, French Guiana
emmanuel.roux@ird.fr
2
LMTG, IRD-CNRS-Université de Toulouse III, Toulouse, France
3
Programa de Engenharia Civil, COPPE/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, PO Box 68506, CEP 21945-910,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
4
LEGOS, IRD-CNRS-CNES-Université de Toulouse III, Toulouse, France
Received 12 February 2008; accepted 5 August 2009; open for discussion until 1 August 2010
Downloaded by [177.15.120.2] at 09:59 14 August 2017

Citation Roux, E., Santos da Silva, J., Vieira Getirana, A. C., Bonnet, M.-P., Calmant, S., Martinez, J.-M. & Seyler, F. (2010)
Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—comparative study. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(1), 104–120.

Abstract Satellite radar altimetry is complementary to in situ limnimetric surveys as a means of estimating the
water height of large rivers, lakes and flood plains. Production of water height time series by satellite radar
altimetry technology requires first the selection of radar ground target locations corresponding to water body
surfaces under study, i.e. the definition of “virtual limnimetric stations”. We propose to investigate qualitative
and quantitative differences between three representative virtual station creation methodologies: (a) a fully
manual method, (b) a semi-automatic method based on a land cover characterization that allows the water body
surface under study to be located; and (c) an original fully automatic procedure that exploits a digital elevation
model and an estimation of the river width. The results yielded by these three methods are comparable: maximum
absolute magnitudes of water height differences being 0.46, 0.26 and 0.15 m for, respectively, 95, 90 and 80% of
the water height values obtained. Moreover, more than 67% and 92% of time series jointly produced by the
methods present root mean square differences lower than 20 and 50 cm, respectively. The results show that the
fully automatic method developed herein provides as reliable results as the fully manual one. This opens the way
to use of satellite radar altimetry for the generation of water height time series on a large scale, and considerably
extends the applicability of satellite radar altimetry in hydrology.
Key words satellite radar altimetry; Amazon basin; water height time series; image classification; digital elevation model

Produire des séries temporelles de hauteur d’eau des cours d’eau grâce à l’altimétrie radar
satellitaire—une étude comparative
Résumé L’altimétrie radar satellitaire est complémentaire des relevés limnimétriques in situ pour l’estimation de
la hauteur d’eau des grands fleuves, lacs et plaines d’inondation. L’obtention de séries temporelles de hauteur
d’eau par altimétrie radar satellitaire requiert la sélection de cibles radar au sol correspondant aux surfaces en eau
d’intérêt, i.e. la définition de “stations limnimétriques virtuelles”. Nous proposons de comparer qualitativement
et quantitativement trois méthodes de création de stations virtuelles: (a) une méthode entièrement manuelle; (b)
une méthode semi-automatique basée sur une caractérisation de l’occupation du sol qui permet de localiser les
cours d’eau; et (c) une procédure originale entièrement automatique qui exploite un modèle numérique de terrain
et une estimation de la largeur de la rivière. Les résultats fournis par ces trois méthodes sont comparables: la
différence absolue maximale de hauteur d’eau est de 0.46, 0.26 et 0.15 m pour, respectivement, 95, 90 et 80% des
valeurs de hauteur obtenues. De plus, plus de 67% et de 92% des séries temporelles produites conjointement par
les méthodes présentent des erreurs quadratiques moyennes inférieures à 20 et à 50 cm, respectivement. Ces
résultats montrent que la méthode entièrement automatique proposée ici fournit des résultats aussi fiables qu’une
méthode entièrement manuelle. Il est par conséquent envisageable d’exploiter l’altimétrie radar satellitaire afin
de générer des séries temporelles de hauteur d’eau à grande échelle, ce qui étend considérablement l’applicabilité
de l’altimétrie radar satellitaire en hydrologie.
Mots clefs altimétrie radar satellitaire; basin Amazonien; séries temporelles de hauteur d’eau; classification d’images; modèle
numérique de terrain

ISSN 0262-6667 print/ISSN 2150-3435 online

© 2010 IAHS Press
doi:10.1080/02626660903529023
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 Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study 105

INTRODUCTION echo, the so called tracker (onboard) or retracker

(ground reprocessing) algorithm. Indeed, contrary to
Water resources management in the great tropical
the oceanic domain that the system was tuned for, the
basins of the world is a complex issue. For example,
shape of the energy distribution in the reception win-
in the Amazon basin, the largest river basin of the
dow is highly variable over continental waters. Frap-
world, the hydrological regimes of the main tributar-
part et al. (2006) have shown that, among the four
ies, their typology and water availability, are affected
retrackers used for the ground processing of the
by human economic activities, such as deforestation,
ENVISAT data, ICE-1 (Wingham et al., 1986) was
mining, and cereal monoculture. Water use must be
the one performing best over rivers. We therefore
regulated between agriculture and rural development,
used the ICE-1 solution for this work. Travel time
energy and transport, water supply and sanitation,
picked up by the retracking algorithm is then con-
environment and tourism. Many tropical basins are
verted into satellite–ground distance by taking into
trans-boundary and conflicting situations arise that
account corrections associated with electromagnetic
may increase in time. In the humid tropics, they
pulse propagation through the atmosphere and iono-
present a dense river network, very variable in shape,
sphere, and solid Earth tides. Orbitography provides
length, width and volume. The water rise during
the satellite height relative to a reference ellipsoid.
flooding varies spatially from 2 to 20 m, but is regu-
The difference between this height and the distance
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lar and persistent in the downstream part of the main

derived from the radar measurement, including the
tributaries. The water height has well-marked annual
aforementioned corrections, gives the height of the
variations which tend to increase in amplitude with
water surface with respect to the reference ellipsoid.
climate change. The Amazon basin includes 50 000 km
Altimetry satellites are kept on a fixed ground track
of waterway, and, despite a low population density,
in order to overfly the same locations at regular time
water quality degradation occurs in several parts of
intervals, called repeat cycles. The repeat cycle
the basin. In such a context, as stated by van Griens-
depends on the orbit parameters selected for the mis-
ven et al. (2006): “Two instruments play an import-
sion. For radar altimetry missions, this typically
ant role in integrated impact assessment: monitoring
ranges from 10 to 35 days. The ability of radar altim-
and modelling”. The Amazon basin covers about 6
eters to monitor stage elevation of continental water
000 000 km2. Sixty-three percent of this area is situ-
surfaces has been demonstrated (Birkett, 1998; De
ated in Brazil and is monitored by 435 limnimetric
Oliveira et al., 2001; Calmant & Seyler, 2006;
stations (ANA, 2008). Installing and maintaining the
Frappart et al., 2006). In the Amazon basin, satellite
operational networks of hydrological in situ stations
data very significantly increase the number of water
in remote basins is complicated and very costly.
stage measurement points. The intersections between
Human-based measurements are subjective, and the
the river system and the satellite tracks are about ten
completeness of data records and their quality
times denser than the actual in situ gauging network.
depend on operator availability and assiduity.
Moreover, if radar altimetry sampling periods, which
In this context, radar altimetry is a promising
correspond to satellite cycle durations, range from 10
complementary tool for water-level monitoring in
(TOPEX/POSEIDON) to 35 days (ENVISAT), it has
large river basins, such as the Amazon basin. Basi-
been shown that daily water stage estimation can be
cally, radar altimetry measures the two-way travel
provided by adequate interpolation techniques asso-
time of a radar pulse between the satellite antenna
ciated with in situ data (Roux et al., 2008). Addition-
and the Earth surface at the nadir of the altimeter.
ally, satellite altimetry already allows river discharge
This measurement is performed through recording
to be estimated by establishing rating curves using
the energy bounced back by the reflecting facets
altimetric heights and either remotely measured dis-
within the altimeter footprint (typically a few km2).
charge (Coe & Birkett, 2004; Kouraev et al., 2004),
Note that the radar wavelength used, namely K-band,
or local model-based discharge estimates (Leon
was selected because it does not penetrate water,
et al., 2006). Also, lake heights can be predicted
making energy reflected by water surfaces predomi-
(Coe & Birkett, 2004) and flood-plain water storage
nate in the total energy received onboard the satellite.
estimated (Frappart et al., 2005).
This energy is processed through a ∼0.1-μs reception
The exploitation of satellite altimeter data is per-
window. An important consideration is the algorithm
formed by defining “virtual limnimetric stations”.
used to derive the two-way travel time from the radar
Basically, a “virtual station” can be defined as any
 106 E. Roux et al.
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Fig. 1 Three-dimensional manual selection: (a) JERS-1 background image, one satellite ground track and the rough geo-
graphical selection of the intersection; (b) data selection into the plane perpendicular to the river direction; (c) locations of
selected data; (d) water height time series corresponding to the selected data. The lines link the medians of overpass values.

intersection between a water body surface and a sat-
ellite ground track (Fig. 1). Ground track locations
show significant variations that can reach 1 km either
side of theoretical ground tracks. Thus, in the follow-
ing, a “track” includes all satellite radar ground tar-
gets and has approximately 2 km width. Several
techniques have been considered in the literature to
define these virtual stations (see the section below on
literature review of “virtual station” definition).
However, these procedures are not extensively dis-
cussed and, to our knowledge, have not been quanti-
tatively compared in terms of water height time
series produced. In this context, it is difficult to com-
pare and/or jointly analyse water height time series
provided by different selection methods. This paper
first reviews altimetric data selection procedures
found in the literature. Then, three procedures are
chosen for investigation and the methodology for
comparison is detailed. The first method is the fully
manual three-dimensional (3-D) selection method
used in Santos da Silva et al. (2007a,b). The second
is a semi-automatic and precise geographical
selection method based on a land-cover characteriza-
tion obtained with the JERS-1 SAR image classifica-
tion methodology proposed by Martinez & Le Toan
(2007). The third method is original and fully auto-
matic. It only exploits a digital elevation model
(DEM) of the studied area and basic knowledge on
the river width along the drainage network. The
results of the investigations are then presented and
discussed. Finally a conclusion is drawn.
LITERATURE REVIEW OF “VIRTUAL
STATION” DEFINITION
Birkett (1998), using AVISO Topex/Poseidon GDR
data, proposed a multi-criteria selection methodol-
ogy. The author: (a) supposes that river surfaces are
associated with a radar backscatter coefficient greater
than 20 dB; (b) uses 1:1 000 000 Operational Navi-
gation Charts (ONC) which roughly indicate the
bank-to-bank geographical crossing points between
satellite tracks and rivers; (c) identifies the water sur-
face by considering the uniformity of the elevation
 Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study
measurements, i.e. the along-track standard deviation
of water height variations; (d) identifies the water sur-
face by utilizing an elevation filter (manual selection
based on ONC map heights and observation of the
altimetric elevations along-track); and (e) separates
river channel from nearby flood plain by examining
the seasonal variation of radar backscatter and eleva-
tion (river channels showing higher-amplitude eleva-
tion variations and lower-amplitude backscatter
variations, and flood plains having the opposite trend).
De Oliveira et al. (2001) and Mercier (2001)
tested three criteria in order to automatically select
altimetric data related to water surfaces: (a) the “lati-
tudinal measurement density”, i.e. the percentage of
valid measurements inside a 1-km-wide window
(along the latitudinal dimension) moved along the
satellite ground track (selection threshold is set to
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50%); (b) the “water level fluctuation”, by stating
that water surfaces have, in the Amazon Basin, an
annual amplitude of at least 1 m; (c) the “backscatter
coefficient”, s°, with the condition s° > 20 dB. How-
ever, Mercier (2001) shows that selection criteria that
only take into account the intrinsic information of
altimetric data do not permit: (i) selection of water
surfaces with a geographical resolution lower than
1 km, or (ii) permanent water surface to be distin-
guished from occasionally flooded areas. As a result,
Mercier (2001) performs precise geographical delim-
itations of areas within which the satellite’s nadir
locations (satellite ground tracks) and water (lakes
and rivers) intersect. For lakes, the author uses the
lake contours provided by the CIA World Data Bank
II, available in the Generic Mapping Tool (GMT)
open-source software, and automatically selects the
altimetric measurements. For large rivers such as the
Amazon River, Mercier (2001) uses Synthetic Aper-
ture Radar (SAR) images provided by the JERS-1
satellite, without, however, presenting in detail what
his selection criteria and tools are (form of the selec-
tion, selected pixels’ features, etc.).
Berry et al. (2005) also used the CIA World
Data Bank II database to define masks and select
inland altimetric data. These masks are set slightly
wider than maximum water extent and a detailed
Amazon River mask is also defined. Then retracking
of radar echoes is performed by means of an expert
system approach (Berry, 2000) and echoes present-
ing a “leading edge and a significant power within
the waveform” are selected (Berry, 2006).
Frappart et al. (2005) used a land-cover charac-
terization based on a JERS-SAR image classification
107
method (Martinez & Le Toan, 2007). Land-cover
characterization involves nine classes: (1) Permanent
water (permanent lakes), (2) Occasionally flooded
forest, (3) Never flooded forest, (4) Never flooded
savannah, (5) Occasionally flooded non-vegetated/
herbaceous areas, (6) Always flooded forest, (7)
Occasionally flooded savannah, (8) Permanent water
(main rivers), and (9) Totally submersed vegetation.
Intersections between classes of interest and satellite
ground tracks are identified, and rectangular selec-
tion windows are defined manually.
In Leon (2006), virtual stations are defined by
manually digitizing rectangular windows that sur-
round the intersections between the satellite tracks and
the rivers located by means of JERS-1-SAR images.
In Kouraev et al. (2004), the authors performed
a more rigorous geographical selection of the alti-
metric data by considering 28.5-m resolution Landsat
images and selecting only parts of the satellite
ground tracks that cover the main channel of the river
(Ob’ River).
Zakharova et al. (2006) used JERS-1-SAR
images and defined a virtual station by a rectangular
window. However, several rectangular windows can
be defined when islands are present.
The previous manual data selection procedures
are two-dimensional. But a simple (even if precise)
geographical selection of altimetric measurements
that “fall” in the water surface, using one image, has
two main drawbacks: (a) the water surface is only
known at the image capture time. So, if the chosen
image corresponds to high water stage, data related
to non-flooded areas during low water stage are
selected and can be unreliable (see Fig. 1(b)). How-
ever, if the chosen image corresponds to low water
stage, possibly valid data related to flooded areas
during a high water stage period are ignored; (b) 2-D
geographical selection does not permit identification
of the off-ranging phenomenon described by Berry
(2000). Radar echo retracking is proposed in order to
overcome this inland-specific artefact (Berry, 2000;
Frappart, 2005). This phenomenon often occurs
when the satellite nadir is not yet (or no more) above
the river surface and the altimeter is already (or still)
locked on the river surface, leading to an underesti-
mation of the water height (see Fig. 1(b)). This is
referred to as a “locking” and a “hooking” phenome-
non in Santos da Silva et al. (2007a,b) and Frappart
(2006), respectively.
In Santos da Silva et al. (2007a,b) the authors
use a 3-D procedure for the altimetric data selection.
 108 E. Roux et al.
First a 2-D geographical selection of the satellite
track–river intersection is performed by using JERS-
SAR images (i.e. a selection in the longitude × lati-
tude plane). Altimetric heights associated with the
selected radar nadir locations are then projected onto
the plane perpendicular to the main direction of the
river (this direction is characterised manually), i.e.
the river section plane. Finally, a second data selec-
tion is performed manually in the river section plane.
This 3-D procedure has been developed to avoid the
two previously mentioned drawbacks of the 2-D geo-
graphical selection. This is given in more detail in the
Method Section below, as it is one of the three meth-
ods extensively studied herein.
All the previously mentioned selection proce-
dures are summarized in Table 1. In the following,
we present in detail, and compare, three methods for
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altimetric data selection.
METHOD
Area of study
The three proposed methodologies have been applied
on the entire Rio Negro basin (Fig. 2). With a mean
annual discharge of 29 000 m3 s-1, the Negro River is
the second largest discharge tributary of the Amazon
after the Madeira River. The drainage area of the Rio
Negro is nearly 700 000 km2 and extends through
parts of Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. The Negro
River basin is consequently a typical great and
remote trans-boundary tropical basin. Most of the
published studies related to satellite radar altimetry
consider the Rio Negro basin.
Altimetric data
In the following, we consider the 18-Hz Ku-range
ENVISAT data contained in the Geophysical Data
Records (GDRs) delivered by the Archiving, Valida-
tion and Interpretation of Satellite data in Oceanogra-
phy (AVISO) at the Centre National d’Etudes
Spatiales (CNES). In particular, the ICE-1 retracked
version of these data is considered. In fact, among the
retrackers Ocean, ICE-1, ICE-2 and Sea Ice, the ICE-
1 algorithm (Wingham et al., 1986) gave the most
accurate results for continental hydrology studies in
Frappart et al. (2006). The corrections applied to
these data are on-board instrumental drifts and biases,
ionospheric, dry and wet troposphere, solid earth and
poles tide corrections (Chelton et al., 2001).
The data set used in this study ranges from 1
October 2002 to 12 November 2006, corresponding
to a four-year-long period. The repeat cycle of
ENVISAT being of 35 days, data from 35 to 42 satel-
lite cycles have been exploited.
Methods for virtual station definition (altimetric
data selection)
Three data selection methods have been chosen for
investigation, according to: (a) their representative-
ness of the methodologies already described in the
literature, and (b) their level of automation:
Three-dimensional manual selection (MANU)
First a map or an image is selected to identify water
surfaces. Here, the high-water stage mosaic of the
Amazon basin provided by the Global Rain Forest
Mapping (GRFM) Project (Freeman et al., 2002) is
used. SAR data characteristics used for this mosaic
construction can be summarized as follows (Hess
et al., 2003): L-band (1275 MHz) frequency and HH
polarization, 34 to 43 degrees for incidence angle,
pixel size resampled at 100 m, acquisition period
from May to August 1996 for the high-water stage
mosaic and from October to November 1995 for the
low-water stage mosaic, –15 to –20 dB for noise
equivalent s°, ±0.2 dB calibration uncertainty.
The MANU selection method consists of a two-
step manual procedure:
(1) A geographical delimitation of the intersection
between the water surface under study and the
ground track of the satellite is realized by digi-
tizing a shape that can be complex (multiple
polygon, exclusion of non-flooded areas,
islands, etc.) (cf. Fig. 1(a)). Then, the user has
to indicate the main flow direction of the river
by pointing two points along the river. Heights
associated with the radar nadir locations falling
in the previously defined zone are automatically
projected onto the plane perpendicular to the
main direction of the river, i.e. the river section
plane. This data representation permits correct
visualization of the altimetric heights associated
with all satellite passes (cf. Fig. 1(b)).
(2) A second selection is manually performed in
the river section plane (cf. Fig. 1(b)) (the same
tool for shape digitizing is used). Data associ-
ated with a low intra-pass variability and a high
inter-pass variability are selected. These criteria
 Downloaded by [177.15.120.2] at 09:59 14 August 2017

Table 1 Summary of altimetric data selection methods found in the literature.

References Satellite(s) Region(s) Information used Selection criterion of free surface water: Map(s)/Image(s)

Derived from geographical Derived from altimetric data

information
Birkett (1998) TOPEX/POSEIDON Paraguay River Tracker waveforms Bank to bank crossing points Minimum number of continuous Operational
(T/P) Amazon River Backscatter between satellite track and waveforms = 2 navigation charts
coefficient river Radar backscatter coefficient >
Altimetric heights ONC elevation values 20 dB
Nadir coordinates Uniformity of the along-track
elevation measurements
Discrimination of river channel
and nearby flood plain by
means of seasonal variation of
radar backscatter coeff. and of
elevation
De Oliveira, T/P Amazon basin Altimetric heights not specified Measurement density not specified
Mercier et al. Backscatter coefficient Water level fluctuation
(2001) Nadir coordinates Backscatter coefficient
Mercier (2001) T/P Great Lakes of North Altimetric heights Precise automatic (lakes) and Measurement density CIA World Data
America (Superior, Backscatter manual (rivers) selection Water level fluctuation Bank II (WDB II)
Michigan, Huron, Erie, coefficient Backscatter coefficient JERS1-SAR
Ontario) Nadir coordinates
Issykkul Lake
(Kyrgyzstan)
11 European lakes
Aral Sea
Amazon basin
Frappart (2005) T/P Negro River basin Nadir coordinates Rectangular windows defined JERS1-SAR
according to a JERS1-SAR- images
based land cover classification
characterization
Leon (2006) ENVISAT Upper Negro River Nadir coordinates Rectangular windows defined JERS1-SAR
manually
Kouraev et al. T/P Ob’ River Nadir coordinates Manual selection of the part of 28.5-m resolution
(2004) the satellite ground tracks Landsat images
that cover the main channel
of the Ob’ River
Berry et al. (2005) ERS-1/2 World Tracker waveforms Masks for lakes and the Radar echoes retracking WDB II
Berry (2006) T/P Amazon River Nadir coordinates Amazon River and Presence of a leading edge
ENVISAT automatic selection Significant power within the
waveform
Zakharova et al. T/P Amazon River Nadir coordinates Manual definition of JERS-SAR
(2006) rectangular windows
(several windows if islands
Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study

make the intersection

between the satellite track
and the river complex)
Silva et al. ENVISAT Negro River basin Nadir coordinates Manual definition of possibly Manual selection of data JERS-SAR
109

(2007a,b) T/P Altimetric heights complex geographical presenting low (resp. high) intra-
selection (resp. inter-)pass variability
 110 E. Roux et al.
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Fig. 2 Negro River basin delimitation, main tributaries and virtual stations defined by the three selection methods (MANU,
AUTO-JERS and AUTO-SRTM). The river network is extracted from the land-cover characterization (Class 8) obtained
from JERS mosaics (Martinez & Le Toan, 2007). Grey oblique lines represent ENVISAT satellite ground tracks.

are also used by Birkett (1998), De Oliveira
et al. (2001) and Mercier (2001) (see Table 1
and section on Literature Review).
In this study, 43 virtual stations defined by Santos da
Silva et al. (2007a,b) are taken into account. For
comparison purposes, it would have been “theoreti-
cally” possible to manually define a virtual station
for each selection performed by the two other
approaches. We used a significant number of previ-
ously defined stations (Santos da Silva, 2007a,b) for
two reasons: (a) the MANU selection technique is
time consuming and performing a selection for every
river–satellite track intersection would have been
particularly tedious; and (b) virtual stations in Santos
da Silva (2007a,b) were created independently of the
objectives pursued in this comparative work and
allow the results to be as objective as possible.
Precise geographical selection (AUTO-JERS)
This method is semi-automatic and is based on the
land-cover characterization derived from a JERS-1
SAR image classification (Martinez & Le Toan,
2007). Altimetric data that “fall” in pixels labelled
“Class 8: Permanent water (main rivers)” are
selected (Fig. 3). This method can be compared with
the approach of Mercier (2001) for lakes and more
generally with any methods based only on geograph-
ical selection (even if most of the published
approaches only require rectangular selections).
In the present study, geographical selections (or
masks) are made one pixel larger than Class 8 areas
that intersect with satellite ground tracks (note that, as
satellite ground track location shows significant vari-
ations that can extend 1 km either side of the theoreti-
cal track, a “track” is approx. 2-km wide in the
following, as it includes all the satellite ground target
locations). Berry et al. (2005) also defined masks
slightly wider than maximum water extent. This
allows virtual stations to be defined for narrow rivers
and avoids the multiplication of virtual stations for
parcelled out satellite track–narrow river intersec-
tions. In fact, such rivers can be characterized by dis-
continuous areas associated with the Class 8 label
(see, for example, Fig. 4). Additionally, intersections
whose surface is smaller than 150 000 m2 are filtered.
However, despite the one-pixel tolerance and the
area-based filter previously mentioned, a manual
post-processing of the results has to be performed in
order to assemble several virtual stations related to
the same river but separated by islands or river dis-
continuities (see Fig. 5(b), (c) and (d) for examples).
This post-processing is a time-consuming operation
that has been partially automated by means of a
 Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study
Fig. 3 Two-dimensional precise geographical selection: (a) Eighth class of the JERS-1-based land-cover characterization
(permanent water: rivers), one satellite ground track and the geographical selection performed automatically; and (b) water
height time series corresponding to the selected data.
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Fig. 4 An example of a parcelled out intersection between
a satellite track and a narrow river. Performance of geo-
graphical selections one pixel larger than the strict inter-
section provides a continuous selection area.
BASH1 script calling GRASS (2006) geographical
information system (GIS) functions for drawing,
selection and concatenation of the virtual stations
(defined by vectorial maps in the GIS).
It is worth noting that the choice of the JERS
mosaic for application of the MANU method is con-
sistent with the use of the land-cover characterization
exploited by the AUTO-JERS approach and makes
the results of these two methods comparable.
1
BASH is a free shell-compatible command language interpreter.
See http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/bash/bashtop.html.
111
DEM-based selection (AUTO-SRTM) Hydro-
graphical networks can be obtained by means of a
DEM. We state that, for the river water height moni-
toring, it is possible to define a virtual station at any
intersection between the drainage network extracted
from a DEM and a satellite ground track. To test this
assumption, we used the Shuttle Radar Topography
Mission (SRTM) DEM at 90-m spatial resolution.
Flow accumulation for all the Negro River basin was
extracted with the r.terraflow.short function of the
GRASS GIS, a flow computation routine for massive
grids (integer version), with the Single Flow Direc-
tion (SFD) option. The r.terraflow function was
designed and optimized especially for massive data
sets, but uses well-known approaches in order to
compute flow direction and accumulation:
(1) r.terraflow first floods the terrain until all the
sinks (flat areas that do not spill out, including
one-cell pits) are filled;
(2) flow directions are then computed using either
the Multiple Flow Direction model or the SFD
model. Both methods compute downslope flow
directions by inspecting the 3 × 3 window
around each cell. The SFD method assigns a
unique flow direction towards the steepest
downslope neighbour;
(3) once flow directions are computed for every
cell in the terrain, r.terraflow computes flow
accumulation by routing water using the flow
directions and keeping track of how much water
flows through each cell. (For more detail on the
algorithms see Arge et al., 2003.)
 112 E. Roux et al.
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Fig. 5 Examples of virtual stations for the three altimetric data selection methods.
Once the flow accumulation is computed, the
drainage network can be easily obtained by simply
considering the cells in which the flow accumulation is
above a given threshold. The higher this threshold, the
less dense the resulting drainage network, ignoring
small-sized rivers. In this study, the drainage network
has been extracted by considering an accumulation
threshold equal to one million cells, corresponding to
8100 km2 watersheds. This threshold was empirically
defined in order to make the SRTM-based drainage
network and Class 8 of the JERS-based land-cover
characterization visually coincide. At this step of the
procedure, both the rivers extracted from the DEM and
the satellite track–river intersections are one cell wide.
Consequently, we propose to define buffers around
satellite track–river intersections in order to define the
geographical areas that possibly contain valid
(river-related) altimetric data. For a given satellite
track–drainage network intersection, we compute the
buffer size as a function of the flow accumulation. As
an intersection is defined by several cells (pixels) with
different flow accumulation values, we consider, for
the ith intersection, the average of the flow accumula-
tion values: Acc(i). The flow accumulation can be con-
sidered as analogous to discharge. In the literature, the
river width W is currently linked to the river discharge
Q by the relationship W = aQb (see, for example, Pis-
tocchi & Pennington, 2006, for a recent application of
this relation and older references). Consequently, for
the ith intersection, the buffer radius r(i) corresponding
to the half river width W(i) is defined by:
β
r ( i ) = 0.5W ( i ) = 0.5α Acc ( i ) (1)
 Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study
where a and b are parameters to be estimated and
Acc(i) is the mean accumulation value for the ith sat-
ellite track–drainage network intersection. In order to
estimate a and b, values for W have been extracted
from transverse section measurements freely avail-
able from the Brazilian Water Agency (Agência
Nacional de Águas, ANA, 2007). Currently, 40 trans-
verse sections are available for the entire Negro River
basin. Then, to facilitate parameter estimation, we
considered the following linear form of equation (1):
log (W ) = log (2r ) = log(a ) + b log (Acc ) (2)
Finally, log(a) and log(b) (i.e. a and b) were esti-
mated with the classical least-squares method in the
R (R Development Core Team, 2005) environment
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for statistical computing (R function lsfit). The
results are shown in Fig. 6. Estimation provided a
residual standard error (RSE) equal to 0.2997 and R2
= 0.9188. We found a = 0.0187 and b = 0.653, and
equation (1) can be written as:
W = 0.0187Q 0.653 (3)
Equation (3) enables the river width to be estimated
for every satellite track–drainage network intersection
and, consequently, one can compute the buffer radius
(with equation (1)) that characterizes areas which
possibly contain valid (river related) altimetric data.
Once parameters a and b are obtained, the creation of
virtual stations for the entire basin is fully automatic.
Fig. 6 (a) Logarithm of the river width as a function of the logarithm of the flow accumulation (points), and the model
estimate (line). R2 = 0.9188 and Residual Standard Error = 0.2997; and (b) river width as a function of the flow accumula-
tion (points), and the model estimate (line).
113
The three methods described above were imple-
mented in BASH language scripts calling GRASS
GIS specific functions.
Comparison of methods
The following aspects of the methods are
investigated:
(1) Number and locations of virtual stations.
(2) Station “morphologies”, i.e. shape and com-
plexity of geographical selections as a function
of the method. This point is addressed from a
qualitative point of view. [Indeed, even if we
focus on river monitoring, the aim of the paper
is not to compare the three methodologies in
terms of river location identification but in
terms of water height estimation. It is quite dif-
ferent according to altimetric data characteris-
tics (footprint size, off-ranging phenomenon,
etc.).] Then a quantitative comparison between
the three approaches is done in order to charac-
terize method differences in terms of water
height and its variability. Methods are consid-
ered pair-wise, by performing paired sample
and one-sided Wilcoxon tests on overpass val-
ues. The Wilcoxon test is a non-parametric test
to compare two related samples and does not
require assumptions about the sample distribu-
tions. The null hypothesis is that the distribution
of the paired sample differences is symmetric
about the median (Hollander & Wolfe, 1973).
 114 E. Roux et al.
Characteristic values computed and discussed
for the quantitative investigation are:
(3) Number of selected points per satellite over-
pass. Water height derived from very few alti-
metric data can be erroneous. The extreme case
is when only one value is selected for a satellite
overpass. In such a case, the height value can be
the “true” one, but it also can correspond to an
inconsistent value due to the off-ranging effect,
an altimeter failure, etc.
(4) Water height. For each satellite overpass, when
several altimetric measurements have been
selected, the water height is characterized by
the median of the altimetric values, the median
being a more robust estimator, less sensitive to
extreme values and a fortiori to outliers, than
the average (see time series in Figs 1 and 3).
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Methods are compared at two levels:
– at the satellite overpass level, by taking into
account: (i) all selected overpasses, and (ii)
overpasses for which at least five measure-
ments have been selected; and
– at the virtual station level, by computing
the RMS differences between water height
time series associated with the virtual sta-
tions jointly defined by two methods. Nor-
malized cumulated histograms of the RMS
differences are computed. This allows
deduction of the percentage of virtual sta-
tions that can be considered as identically
defined by two methods, in terms of water
height and as a function of a RMS differ-
ence tolerance.
(5) Water height variability. Overpasses that com-
prise at least five selected values are consid-
ered. Variability is characterized by the median
absolute deviation, MAD:
N Negro River network is extracted from the land-
MAD(x ) = 1 /( N − 1)∑ xi − xmed
i =1
where N is the number of observations, xi is the
ith observation and xmed is the median of the
observations. The overpass-based and the time
series-based (or station-based) investigations of
the methods are performed too. Two stations,
S1 and S2, related to the same satellite track–
river intersection, provide identically variable
results according to a MAD difference toler-
ance, d, if:
max i | MAD(cS1i ) − MAD(cS2i ) | < d
MAD(cSji) being the median absolute deviation
of values related to the ith overpass of Station
Sj.
RESULTS
Number and locations of virtual stations
The 2-D precise geographical selection method
using the JERS land-cover characterization (AUTO-
JERS) initially provided 219 geographical selec-
tions. After the post-processing of these 219 areas
(see Method Section, paragraph on Precise geo-
graphical selection), 128 virtual stations were
defined. The SRTM-based method (AUTO-SRTM)
yielded 131 virtual stations. In order to get compara-
ble results between methods, seven of these stations
were assembled with the nearest ones only separated
by islands. Consequently, 124 virtual stations were
finally obtained with the SRTM-based method.
Eventually, in the following, 43 virtual stations
defined by Santos da Silva, et al. (2007a,b) with the
3-D manual method (MANU) are taken into
account.
The AUTO-JERS and AUTO-SRTM methods
have 102 virtual stations in common, i.e. stations cor-
responding to the same satellite ground track–river
intersections. The AUTO-JERS and MANU methods
have 40 stations in common, the AUTO-SRTM and
MANU procedures 38, and the number of satellite
track–river intersections jointly considered by the
three methods is 38.
Figure 2 shows the geographical distribution
of the stations for each method. In Fig. 2, the
cover characterization (Class 8) obtained from
JERS mosaics (Martinez & Le Toan, 2007).
Consequently, all the stations defined by the
AUTO-JERS method are represented on the river
in Fig. 2. Stations manually defined (MANU
method) are not necessarily represented on the
river. Eventually, stations obtained by the AUTO-
SRTM methodology can be located on tributaries
that do not appear in Fig. 2, given the fact that, in
this case, the drainage network used for station
definition comes from the SRTM data and are
independent from JERS.
 Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study 115

Station “morphologies” respectively, only 1318 (30.0%) and 1657 (36.3%)

overpasses (see Table 2). Eventually, 1680 over-
Figure 5 shows different typical virtual station “mor-
passes are associated with the 43 stations provided
phologies”, for some stations that significantly differ
by the MANU approach.
from one method to another. For manually defined
The results concerning the number of selected
selections (MANU method), we have represented the
measurements for satellite overpasses jointly consid-
selected satellite nadir locations, the geographical
ered by two methods are presented in Table 3. They
selection alone, performed during the first step of the
show that the MANU method allows a significantly
MANU procedure, not being representative of the
greater number of measurements to be selected than
finally selected altimetric data.
the two other methods. The AUTO-JERS approach
Figure 5(b) shows very similar selections
selects the least number of altimetric measurements.
between AUTO-JERS and AUTO-SRTM methods.
In particular, with such a method, a significant
However, significant differences in data selection
number of overpasses (1125, i.e. 25.6%) is character-
can be observed between these two methods (Fig.
ized by only one altimetric measurement, making
5(c) and (d)). The AUTO-SRTM method selects
water heights unreliable.
areas that (a priori) do not correspond to water,
according to JERS-based land-cover characterization
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(Fig. 5(a) and (c)). In Figs 5(b), and 6(c) and (d), it
may be noticed that the MANU method allows selec-
tion of data a long distance away from the river.
Number of selected points per satellite overpass
The AUTO-JERS method allowed 128 virtual sta-
tions to be defined, associated with 4399 satellite
overpasses. In total 124 virtual stations, correspond-
ing to 4558 overpasses, were obtained with the
AUTO-SRTM method. However, AUTO-JERS and
AUTO-SRTM selected at least five height values for,
Water height
Table 4 shows the results of paired samples and one-
sided Wilcoxon tests for water heights (medians) and
at the overpass level.
Median heights obtained with AUTO-SRTM
appear to be significantly lower than those resulting
from the other two methods. The results related to
overpasses that contain at least five selected measure-
ments are presented in the second part of Table 4.
Water heights obtained with the MANU method are
significantly higher than those obtained by the two
other methods. Water heights provided by the AUTO-

Table 2 Number of virtual stations and of altimetric values provided by the three selection methods.
MANU AUTO-JERS AUTO-SRTM

Stations 43 128 124

Satellite overpasses 1680 4399 4558
Overpasses with only one value 5 (0.3%) 1125 (25.6%) 129 (3.0%)
Overpasses with at least five values 1263 (75.2%) 1318 (30.0%) 1657 (36.3%)
Stations with at least one pass of at 35 (81.4%) 71 (55.5%) 69 (55.6%)
least five values

Table 3 Comparison of the three altimetric data selection methods in terms of number of selected measurements per
cycle (Nb).
Method X vs Method Y

MANU vs MANU vs AUTO-JERS vs

AUTO-JERS AUTO-SRTM AUTO-SRTM

Number of common satellite overpasses 1501 1451 3681

Paired, one-sided Wilcoxon test > > <
Nb(X) vs Nb(Y) (p << 0.01) (p << 0.01) (p = 0.0080)
Distribution of Nb(X)–Nb(Y) 95% confidence interval [–19, 51] [–20, 63] [–5, 17]
[min, max] [–31, 64] [–30, 73] [–21, 54]
 116 E. Roux et al.

Table 4 Comparison of the three altimetric data selection methods in terms of median water height (h).
Method X vs Method Y

MANU vs MANU vs AUTO-JERS vs

AUTO-JERS AUTO-SRTM AUTO-SRTM

All satellite Paired, one-sided Wilcoxon test NS > >

overpasses h(X) vs h(Y) (p << 0.01) (p = 0.00040)
Distribution of 95% confidence [–0.36, 0.46] [–0.62, 0.84]
h(X)–h(Y) interval
[min, max] [–3.03, 2.60] [–68.86, 36.13]
At least five Paired, one-sided Wilcoxon test > > >
selected values h(X) vs h(Y) (p = 0.015) (p << 0.01) (p = 0.0008)
per overpass Distribution of 95% confidence [–0.33, 0.39] [–0.26, 0.42] [–0.28, 0.33]
h(X)–h(Y) interval
[min, max] [–0.92, 1.86] [–0.77, 2.60] [–19.65, 1.68]
Downloaded by [177.15.120.2] at 09:59 14 August 2017

Fig. 7 RMS differences between water height time series of coinciding stations for each pair of methods.

SRTM method are still the lowest. However, the rela- This maximum bound is 0.26 and 0.15 m for the 90
tive differences are small, the maximum (absolute and 80% confidence intervals, respectively.
magnitude) bound of the 95% confidence interval The normalized cumulated histograms in Fig. 7
being 0.46 m (between MANU and AUTO-SRTM). can be interpreted as the percentage of virtual
 Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study
stations that can be considered as identically defined
by two methods as a function of the RMS difference.
Of the stations jointly defined by MANU and
AUTO-JERS methods, 67.5 and 95% present RMS
differences of less than 0.2 and 0.5 m, respectively.
These proportions are 73.7 and 92.1% for MANU
and AUTO-SRTM methods, respectively. In the case
of AUTO-JERS and AUTO-SRTM, these propor-
tions are 60.8 and 83.3%. For the latter two methods,
stations for which the RMS differences are high are
those that comprise a low number of selected altimet-
ric measurements per overpass. In fact, Fig. 7(d)
reports the RMS differences between time series
jointly defined by AUTO-JERS and AUTO-SRTM
methods, as a function of the minimum number of
measurements per overpass. It appears that by taking
into account only overpasses characterized by at least
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five measurements, 85.7 and 97.9% of stations
jointly defined by the two methods present RMS dif-
ferences equal to 0.2 and 0.5 m, respectively.
Water height variability
Table 5 presents the median, the 80th and the 95th
percentiles of the MAD distribution over all over-
passes with at least five measurements and for
each method. The three methods provide very sim-
ilar variabilities, with about 0.1, 0.2 and 0.5 m for
Table 5 Intra-pass variability: median, 80th and 95th per-
centiles of the median absolute deviation (MAD) values
computed for all selected satellite overpasses and as a
function of the altimetric data selection method.
MANU AUTO-JERS AUTO-SRTM
Median (m) 0.12 0.10 0.10
80th percentile (m) 0.24 0.21 0.22
95th percentile (m) 0.46 0.52 0.56
Table 6 Comparison of the three altimetric data selection methods in terms of height median absolute deviation (MAD).
At least five Paired, one-sided Wilcoxon test
selected values MAD(X) vs MAD(Y)
per overpass Distribution of 95% confidence interval
MAD(X)–MAD(Y)
117
the median, the 80th and the 95th percentiles,
respectively.
In the following, results are presented as in the
previous paragraph: Table 6 gives the paired samples
and one-sided Wilcoxon test results, the extremes
and the 95% confidence interval of differences
between selection methods considered pair-wise. The
test results show significant differences in variability
in all cases. However, we show that the methodolo-
gies slightly differ in terms of absolute magnitudes of
the differences: the maximum absolute bound of the
95% confidence interval, 0.31 m, is obtained
between MANU and AUTO-SRTM (this value is
only 0.15 m for the 80% confidence intervals).
Figure 8 presents the cumulative percentage of
stations considered to have identical variability as a
function of a MAD difference value. Of the 102 sta-
tions jointly defined by the AUTO-JERS and AUTO-
SRTM methods, 53.1 and 79.6% present MAD dif-
ferences below 0.20 and 0.50 m, respectively. The
MANU and AUTO-SRTM methods present the
greatest divergence in terms of results variability,
with “only” 20.0 and 70.0% of stations “identically”
variable to within 0.2 and 0.5 m, respectively. These
proportions are 34.4 and 81.2% for the MANU and
AUTO-JERS methods, respectively.
DISCUSSION
The MANU and AUTO-SRTM methods permit the
definition of virtual stations at the very upstream part
of the hydrological network: for AUTO-SRTM, this
can be realized by considering a lower accumulation
threshold (1 million cells is used in this study).
Another advantage of the MANU method is that, by
proposing an altimetric measurement selection in the
river section, it does not take into account only the
information derived from images or DEM. The
AUTO-JERS and AUTO-SRTM selection proce-
dures, in turn, exploit images or DEM established at
Method X vs Method Y
MANU vs MANU vs AUTO-JERS vs
AUTO-JERS AUTO-SRTM AUTO-SRTM
> > >
(p << 0.01) (p << 0.01) (p = 0.0018)
[–0.26, 0.23] [–0.31, 0.31] [–0.27, 0.31]
[min, max] [–2.06, 0.89] [–2.24, 1.26] [–54.60, 22.64]
 118 E. Roux et al.
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Fig. 8 Number of virtual stations that can be considered as identically variable in terms of MAD(cSji), i.e. the median abso-
lute deviation of values related to the ith cycle of station Sj.
a given time, whereas river width and even river
channel location change over time.
If flood plains adjoin the river, data related to
these flood plains tend to be selected by the MANU
method. This explains why some selected altimetric
data are far away from the river channel (see Fig. 5).
This shows that, although the 43 virtual stations
defined with the MANU method were intended for
river monitoring, selection criteria associated with
the second selection step (low intra-pass height vari-
ability and high inter-pass height variability) are
favoured and the geographical selection associated
with the first step of the procedure appears to have a
negligible effect on the final selection in this case (of
course, this would not have been the case if stricter
geographical selections had been done according to
JERS data). One of the main drawbacks of the
MANU method is that, being entirely manual, it is
time consuming and is likely to provide results that
are poorly repeatable and reproducible.
The drainage network obtained with the SRTM
does not reproduce the complexity of the river mor-
phology, the presence of islands for instance. This
explains why selections resulting from AUTO-
SRTM can be very different from those provided by
the two other methods (Fig. 5(c) and (d)). Moreover,
this drainage network presents some aberrations, e.g.
sudden direction changes and rectilinear segments
that occur in flat areas (see Fig. 5(a) and (c)). An
additional limitation of the SRTM-based method is
that the line obtained by means of the flow accumu-
lation method does not necessarily coincide with the
line at equal distance from each true river bank (see
Fig. 5(a)). Eventually, the model (equation (1)) used
 Producing time series of river water height by means of satellite radar altimetry—a comparative study
by the AUTO-SRTM method only represents an
averaged (or smoothed) river morphology and cannot
take into account the river morphology variability
(see Fig. 5(a)). From a geographical point of view, all
these drawbacks contribute to questionable river
location identifications. Nevertheless, AUTO-SRTM
is a fully automatic method that provides comparable
results, in terms of water height time series and
results variability, to manual and consequently more
subjective, less repeatable and reproducible, and
time-consuming methods. Moreover, most of drain-
age network inconsistencies can be repaired by pre-
viously smoothing the DEM (Grohmann et al.,
2007), or by forcing flow directions to known
river locations as proposed by Hutchinson (1989),
Saunders (1999) and Getirana et al. (2007). These
approaches would improve the drainage network
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reliability and, consequently, the virtual station defi-
nition and have to be tested in further works.
The previous remarks have to be moderated by
the quantitative comparison of results. These results
show that the RMS differences between the water
height time series provided by the three methods are
of the same order of magnitude compared to the alti-
metric height RMS errors mentioned in the literature
for the ENVISAT-RA2 altimeter and the ICE-1
retracker. These RMS errors range between 0.11 and
0.53 m, depending on the water surface under study
(Frappart et al., 2006).
One may wonder why the water height obtained
with the MANU method is significantly higher than
that provided by the two other selection procedures.
One explanation is that, being entirely manual, the
MANU method avoids the selection of altimetric
measurements associated with the “hooking” phe-
nomenon (see Fig. 1(b)). Hooking leads to underesti-
mation of the water height (see Fig. 1(b)).
Consequently, the AUTO-SRTM method, which
tends to select altimetric measurements out of water
surfaces (see. Fig. 5(a) and (c)), is more likely to
select radar nadir locations associated with the altim-
eter locking phenomenon and consequently to under-
estimate the water height.
CONCLUSION
Continental water height time series obtained with
satellite altimetric data result from the definition of
“virtual limnimetric stations”, that is the selection of
radar nadir locations possibly related to the water sur-
face of interest. In practice, researchers use different
119
procedures in order to define these virtual stations,
making the results described in the literature difficult
to compare. The present study compares different
altimetric data selection procedures: (a) a fully man-
ual 3-D selection procedure, (b) a method exploiting
a land-cover characterization that permits the loca-
tion of water body surfaces (rivers in this study), and
(c) a fully automatic and original procedure that uses
a DEM and an estimation of the river width. We
show that the great majority of result differences, in
terms of water height and results variability, are com-
parable with the absolute altimetric data errors
reported in the literature. Consequently, from a glo-
bal point of view, we can consider the fully auto-
matic method to define all the virtual stations of a
given basin. This opens the way to use of satellite
radar altimetry for water height time series genera-
tion on a large scale and, consequently, considerably
extends the applicability of satellite radar altimetry in
hydrology.
However, a minority of virtual stations jointly
defined by the three methods are significantly differ-
ent. This demonstrates that from the point of view of
a single station level, differences can be significant,
and, therefore, the reliability of a virtual station defi-
nition method depends on the context. In the future,
we should focus on these differences in order to char-
acterize them as a function of the context, i.e. the
river morphology, the relief, the tracking algorithm,
etc. This would allow one to automatically select the
virtual station definition methodology that is better
adapted to the observed context.
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