Remote sensing techniques for flood monitoring in the Senegal River Valley

Accurate mapping of the aerial extent and duration of yearly flooding of the Senegal River may aid the assessment of the continued viability of traditional flood recession agriculture, as well as the monitoring of hazards to people, irrigated agriculture, buildings and infrastructure. At the same time geomorphologic complexity and expanding rice cultivation requiring dikes and channels make prediction of flooding with hydrological models difficult. Satellite imagery is an aid to mapping yearly flooding, and in this study several techniques based on different sensors (medium and low resolution optical sensors and a Synthetic Aperture Radar) will be compared and validated against ground-based surveys. AH the tested methods were highly accurate, as well as their operational potential when combined with hydrodynamic modelling. The presented results focus on the 1999 flood.