Remote Sensing of Flow Velocity, Channel Bathymetry, and River Discharge

Dear Colleagues,

River discharge is a fundamental hydrological quantity that summarizes how a watershed transforms the input of precipitation into output as streamflow. The accurate measurement of discharge is critical for numerous applications including water supply, navigation, recreation, management of in-stream habitat, and prediction and monitoring of floods and droughts. However, traditional, in situ stream gage networks providing such data are sparse and declining, even in developed nations, and absent in many parts of the world. Moreover, establishing and maintaining these gages is expensive, labor-intensive, and can place personnel at risk. 

For all these reasons, remote sensing represents an appealing alternative means of obtaining streamflow information. Potential advantages of the remote sensing approach include greater efficiency, expanded coverage, increased measurement frequency, cost savings, reduced risk to field hydrographers, and the opportunity to examine not just isolated cross-sections but longer reaches of river channels in two or three dimensions. Realizing these objectives will require research focused on the remote measurement of river discharge and its components: flow velocity and channel geometry. 

The purpose of this Special Issue is to stimulate progress toward an operational capacity for streamflow monitoring and advance novel methods for retrieving discharge and its components by encouraging studies on this topic and compiling high-quality, peer-reviewed articles in an issue of Remote Sensing dedicated to this theme. We encourage the submission of manuscripts concerned with all aspects of the remote measurement of streamflow, including estimation of flow velocity, channel bathymetry (or water depth), and discharge from various types of remotely-sensed data (active or passive) acquired from a range of platforms (manned or unmanned aircraft, satellites, or ground-based imaging systems). Papers describing past, present, or future missions devoted to fluvial remote sensing are welcome, with a submission deadline of 15 February 2020.

Dr. Carl J. Legleiter
Dr. Tamlin Pavelsky
Dr. Michael Durand
Dr. George Allen
Dr. Angelica Tarpanelli
Dr. Renato Frasson
Dr. Inci Guneralp
Dr. Amy Woodget
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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