Water level monitoring in the Ogooué river basin

Water level monitoring and river discharge using radar altimetry in the Ogooué river basin.

Water levels and discharges (1995-2017) of the Ogooué river basin were estimated using radar altimetry data from the the following missions: Jason-2 (2008-2016), Jason-3 (since 02/2016), ERS-2 (1996-2003), ENVISAT (2002-2010), SARAL (2013-2016), Sentinel-3A (since 02/2016) and Cryosat-2 (since 2010), but also from the second (drifting) orbit of ENVISAT (2010-2012). These data were made available by Centre de Topographie des Océans et de l’Hydrosphère (CTOH). In this study, an altimetry-based network of 34 virtual stations (VS) was defined across the Ogooué river and its major tributaries (Ivindo and Ngounie) and the Multi-mission altimetry Processing Software (MAPS) was used for processing altimetry data based on the method detailed in (Frappart et al., 2015). Combination of datasets from several VS to infer long term time series of water level and discharge at Lambaréné was made based on the method described in (Papa et al., 2012).