Abstract

A river catchment it is a rational unit for environmental planning because it is an open system in which the inputs and outputs are known, and the boundary can be determined. Changes in vegetation cover impact on catchment systems causing a change in infiltration rate, ground water recharge, increase in runoff, erosion and sedimentation rates, and changes in hydrological regimes. A better understanding of these processes and their impact can be achieved by modelling vegetation change and hydrological responses with the aid of remote sensing data.

The moderately high spatial and temporal resolution of the DMC satellite offers significant advantages over other satellite systems for catchment-scale monitoring of vegetation cover dynamics. DMC data, used in combination with data from other satellite systems such as Landsat ETM, MODIS and MERIS, may provide the UK with the first usable time series vegetation cover data with potential applications in hydrology, ecology and agriculture.