Monitoring floods with AVHRR

Abstract During 1988 the movement of a flood down the Darling River in central eastern Australia was monitored using AVHRR imagery. During the observation period the thermal channels at night gave better contrast between the flood and the surrounding land than the visible and near infrared channels during the day. The slow movement of the flood front is typical of floods in central Australia, where the fall of the rivers from catchment area to the sea is small. The AVHRR is suitable for monitoring such floods as there is typically very little cloud cover over the area and, during the night, the contrast between the water temperature and the surrounding land is large. Although the spatial resolution of the AVHRR is 1 km, it has been possible to make some estimate of the area covered by the flood.