SWOT: Hydrology

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Hydrology

How Much Water?

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SWOT will provide the very first comprehensive view of Earth's freshwater bodies from space and will allow scientists to determine the height and area of fresh water across the globe at an unprecedented resolution. Hydrologists will use the data to calculate the rate of water gained or lost in lakes, reservoirs, and wetlands as well as discharge variations in rivers, globally. These are key for knowing surface water availability and for understanding important water related hazards such as floods.

Given our basic need for fresh water, hydrologic observations of the temporal and spatial variations in water volumes stored in rivers, lakes, and wetlands are extremely important. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the global dynamics of terrestrial surface waters and their interactions with coastal oceans in estuaries is very limited. By measuring water storage changes in all wetlands, lakes, and reservoirs and making it possible to estimate discharge in rivers more accurately, SWOT will contribute to a fundamental understanding of the terrestrial branch of the global water cycle. SWOT will also map wetlands and non-channelized flow.

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