Surface Water Monitoring within Cambodia and the Vietnamese Mekong Delta over a Year, with Sentinel-1 SAR Observations

This study presents a methodology to detect and monitor surface water with Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data within Cambodia and the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. It is based on a neural network classification trained on Landsat-8 optical data. Sensitivity tests are carried out to optimize the performance of the classification and assess the retrieval accuracy. Predicted SAR surface water maps are compared to reference Landsat-8 surface water maps, showing a true positive water detection of approximate to 90% at 30 m spatial resolution. Predicted SAR surface water maps are also compared to floodability maps derived from high spatial resolution topography data. Results show high consistency between the two independent maps with 98% of SAR-derived surface water located in areas with a high probability of inundation. Finally, all available Sentinel-1 SAR observations over the Mekong Delta in 2015 are processed and the derived surface water maps are compared to corresponding MODIS/Terra-derived surface water maps at 500 m spatial resolution. Temporal correlation between these two products is very high (99%) with very close water surface extents during the dry season when cloud contamination is low. This study highlights the applicability of the Sentinel-1 SAR data for surface water monitoring, especially in a tropical region where cloud cover can be very high during the rainy seasons.