Satellite remote sensing for operational hydrology

Traditional means of data gathering are inadequate for present purposes in hydrology and water management. Thus, hydrologists are urgently seeking new ways for supplementing their conventional data supplies. Satellite remote sensing is being explored increasingly as one possible answer to such data acquisition problems, both because of its perceived facility for providing greatly improved space and time coverage of key hydrological observation systems; and because the technologies of data acquisiton, transmission and processing have become more advanced and more capable. Although the use of remote sensing - especially from satellites - is currently less well developed in these contexts than in support of many other Earth resource and environmental sciences, much successful hydrological research has already been based upon satellite data and in limited but important ways satellite data have already begun to be used in water monitoring and management operations.