Rainwater Harvesting in India: Using Radar Remote Sensing Observations to Monitor Water Storage

Tank rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems are a potential solution for reducing water stress in Southern India by providing groundwater recharge and seasonal water storage. Remote sensing (RS) observations have a potential to monitor these systems over larger spatial scales and offer a systemic approach to support scientific efforts in water management. The research objective was to develop a method for water volume retrieval in tank systems in S. India. This method used data from the Sentinel-1A (S-1A) sensor in combination with a new high-resolution global digital elevation model (DEM), the TerraSAR-X Add-On for Digital Elevation Measurement (TanDEM-X), to monitor the water volume changes within seven tank structures. This research has offered a unique contribution to the hydrologic science community by incorporating synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and a high-resolution DEM for tank monitoring.