Assimilation of Sentinel-1 Backscatter into a Land Surface Model with River Routing and Its Impact on Streamflow Simulations in Two Belgian Catchments

Accurate streamflow simulations rely on good estimates of the catchment-scale soil moisture distribution. Here, we evaluated the potential of Sentinel-1 backscatter data assimilation (DA) to improve soil moisture and streamflow estimates. Our DA system consisted of the Noah-MP land surface model coupled to the HyMAP river routing model and the water cloud model as a backscatter observation operator. The DA system was set up at 0.018 resolution for two con-trasting catchments in Belgium: (i) the Demer catchment dominated by agriculture and (ii) the Ourthe catchment domi-nated by mixed forests.... Mehr ...