Radar versus optical: The impact of cloud cover when mapping seasonal surface water for health applications in monsoon-affected India.

ABSTRACT: Surface water plays a vital role in the spread of infectious diseases. Information on the spatial and temporal dynamics of surface water availability is thus critical to understanding, monitoring and forecasting disease outbreaks. Before the launch of Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) missions, surface water availability has been captured at various spatial scales through approaches based on optical remote sensing data. A critical drawback of the latter is data loss due to cloud cover, however few studies have quantified this. This study evaluated data loss due to clouds in three Western Ghats (India) districts. These forest-agricultural mosaic landscapes, where water-related diseases are prevalent, experience the Indian monsoon. We compared surface water areas mapped by thresholdi

SUBMITTER: Uday G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11760589 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature