River flow forecasting in mountainous areas using remote sensing techniques

The objective of this research is to develop a simple semi-distributed, physically based hydrologic model (SDPB_HM) for mountainous watershed areas. Most of the required watershed parameters in this developed model were acquired using remotely sensed imagery and digital terrain data.; A modified technique to involve the use of the land cover properties in the Morton (1983) evapotranspiration model was proposed in this research. This new modified technique was proposed to overcome one of the major disadvantages of the Morton's evapotranspiration model for not having any allowances for the properties of different land cover types (Kite, 1997). The suitability of estimation the evapotranspiration using this modified technique was judged in this research by comparing its results with other average daily evapotranspiration data for an adjacent basin; Cross River Basin in the Rocky Mountain in British Columbia, Canada during year 1987.; A new modified procedure for estimating maximum storage capacity in a basin that could estimate the retained rain or snowmelt water within the watershed area related to sink pixels on DTED was presented in this research.; A simplified procedure for performing the geometric correction to satellite images based on the Oguro et al. (2001) technique that is used to register these images by utilizing a simulated shaded DTED overlaid with simulated streamlines network image was proposed in this work.; A complete three-stage computer classifier (EBPANN) was built in this research that was aimed at minimizing the negative affect of overlapping spectral signatures. This developed computer classifier model was written in C computer program language and utilized in its procedures the error back-propagation neural network this proposed classifier technique was applied to classify a large part from Kananaskis Country area in the Rocky Mountains, Alberta, Canada.; An enhanced method was employed in this work for dividing the watershed areas. This new modified technique was aimed at reducing the calculation computer time in the devolved hydrologic computer model with regarding the homogeneity concerns within each small discrete element. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...