Multipolarization Time Series of Sentinel-1 SAR Imagery to Analyze Variations of Reservoirs’ Water Body

In this article, a two-year time-series of multipolarization Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is exploited to analyze the changes in the water-covered area of the Monte Cotugno (Italy) reservoir. A two-step processing chain, which includes water/land separation and waterline extraction, is proposed to accomplish this task. Experimental results, verified using independent in situ measurements, demonstrate that: first, Sentinel-1 time series can be successfully used to support the smart water management of reservoirs. In fact, the changes in the water-covered area inferred from the SAR time series agree with the seasonal behavior and they also fit anomalies; and second, multipolarization feature outperforms single-polarization ones in terms of accuracy of the extracted waterline profile.