Operational satellite remote sensing for hydrological modelling

Land use classified from Landsat TM images is used to calculate the land-use distribution in river basins and for finding homogeneous areas in NOAA AVHRR scale. In Finland NOAA AVHRR images are received by the Meteorological Institute, where they are preprocessed. The NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) and the surface temperature, interpreted from AVHRR images, have been used as input data to calibrate vegetation/soil parameters in a one-dimensional atmosphere/vegetation/soil model. It is shown that the atmosphere/vegetation/soil model can be used to estimate surface fluxes and soil moisture content both locally and areally, even for periods as long as one month. The preliminary results of the model verification are discussed.