Click on the appropriate 10 degree display sheet.

See also older displays available at the Dartmouth site

Explanation

The "Surface Water Record" (G. R. Brakenridge, online publication at: http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu/Modis.html)

displays inland surface water changes observed by orbital remote sensing since 1985 (most intensively, since late 1999, with the launch of the NASA sensor MODIS aboard the Terra Satellite). Charting and measuring these changes is continuing up the present and the Record is continually revised. Water mapped during normal conditions provides a reference for comparison to water imaged during times of flood and drought. The Record also includes access to river discharge and wateshed runoff estimates obtained via a microwave sensor (AMSR-E) aboard the Aqua satellite at the River Watch measurement sites.

As satellite-based mapping of present and past floods proceeds, an increasingly comprehensive view of the long term variability of the Earth's surface water is emerging and is recorded here. Increasingly, future flood risk can also be estimated by locating the mapped flood inundation limits within the daily time-series provided at the River Watch sites, commencing in mid-2002.

GIS data from which the Record displays are created are also available to the public, at: http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu/GISdata/

Caution: Floods in mountainous regions are difficult remote sensing targets and not always observable via satellite. Additionally, cloud cover or other imaging constraints sometimes restrict the ability to capture peak inundation. Lastly, many inventoried flood events since 1999 have not yet been mapped. The present maps do not illustrate all areas of known flood hazard. However, they do provide the first comprehensive global view of observed surface water variability as expressed by changes in water surface area.

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