River Waterbody Extraction and Discharge Estimation Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Data

A study proposes a discharge-estimation framework leveraging Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 optical imagery for a river reach in Hebei Province, China. The method achieved high accuracy in waterbody extraction (OA=95.31%, Kappa=0.90) and good performance in discharge estimation (R²≈0.83–0.84, NSE≈0.83–0.84). Author Bin Li published the associated documentation under a CC-BY-4.0 license on figshare.

Use Cases

• Estimating river discharge based on satellite-derived river width measurements.
• Monitoring river waterbody extent and changes over time using optical and SAR imagery.
• Developing gap-filling strategies for continuous hydrological observation when optical data is unavailable.
• Validating hydraulic geometry models for lowland river reaches.

Strengths

• The framework achieved high reported accuracy metrics (overall accuracy 95.31%, Kappa 0.90).
• Discharge estimates showed good performance (R²≈0.83–0.84, NSE≈0.83–0.84) and remained robust under cross-validation (NSE≈0.79–0.81).
• The method is described as a low-cost, physically interpretable approach using complementary, freely available satellite data.

Limitations

• The dataset's actual data content is limited to a 52.1 KB DOCX file, suggesting it contains documentation rather than raw or processed data.
• The applicability is described as mainly limited to single-thread, non-braided, morphologically stable lowland rivers.
• Column-level documentation and sample data are unavailable, limiting assessment of the underlying data structure.

Provenance

Source

Bin Li via figshare.

Collection Method

Derived from Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 optical imagery using a proposed framework for waterbody extraction and discharge estimation.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-25 10:30:49.

Geography

Fuyang River in Handan, Hebei Province, China.