Coupling multitemporal remote sensing with geomorphology and hydrological modeling for post flood recovery in the Strymonas dammed river basin (Greece)

We present a case study of a long-term integrated monitoring of a flood event which affected part of the Strymonas dammed river basin, a transboundary river with source in Bulgaria, which flows then through Greece to the Aegean Sea. The event, which affected the floodplain downstream the Kerkini dam, started at the beginning of April 2015, due to heavy rain upstream of the monitored area, and lasted for several months, with some water pools still present at the beginning of September, due to the peculiar geomorphological conditions of the watershed. We collected a multi-temporal dataset consisting of a high-resolution, X-band COSMO-SkyMed, and several C-band Sentinel-1 SAR and optical Landsat-8 images of the area. The results allow following the event in time, sketching a multi-temporal map of the post-flood evolution, with relatively high temporal resolution. We then use hydrological modeling to mimic the dynamics of the flooded area against post event weather patterns and thus explain the observed flood extent evolution. We show how integrating remote sensing-derived maps of flooded areas, geomorphological analyses of the landscape and simplified hydrological modeling allows accurate inference about long-term dynamics of flooded areas, very important in the post event in anthropogenic highly modified areas, where recovery time after the flood event is considerable, and long term water persistence may lead to large consequences, carrying economic damages and medical emergencies.