Inland Water Body Mapping Using CYGNSS Coherence Detection

Abstract

This work demonstrates the creation of dynamic inland water body masks at spatial resolutions ranging from 1 to 3 km through the use of a recently developed coherence detector for the delay-Doppler maps produced by the cyclone global navigation satellite system (CYGNSS) constellation. The use of the coherence of the observed measurements reduces many of the uncertainties associated with previous signal-to-noise ratio-based water body detection approaches for CYGNSS. Using data from January 2018 to February 2020 and producing maps representing time intervals ranging from 3 months to 2 years, the water body masks created are found to be associated with a probability of detection that exceeds 80% as compared to the Pekel water mask developed from Landsat observations. The analysis presented in this work highlights the potential of using spaceborne Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometry (GNSS-R) systems for dynamic inland water body mapping.