Integrating Global Satellite-Derived Data Products as a Pre-Analysis for Hydrological Modelling Studies: A Case Study for the Red River Basin Remote Sensing

With changes in weather patterns and intensifying anthropogenic water use, there is an increasing need for spatio-temporal information on water fluxes and stocks in river basins. The assortment of satellite-derived open-access information sources on rainfall (P) and land use/land cover (LULC) is currently being expanded with the application of actual evapotranspiration (ETact) algorithms on the global scale. We demonstrate how global remotely sensed P and ETact datasets can be merged to examine hydrological processes such as storage changes and streamflow prior to applying a numerical simulation model. The study area is the Red River Basin in China in Vietnam, a generally challenging basin for remotely sensed information due to frequent cloud cover.