An integrated modelling and remote sensing approach for hydrological study in arid and semi-arid regions: the SUDMED Program

International audience; Recent efforts have been concentrated in the development of models to understand and predict the impact of environmental changes on hydrological cycle and water resources in arid and semi-arid regions. In this context, remote sensing data have been widely used to initialize, to force, or to control the simulations of these models. However, for several reasons, including the difficulty in establishing relationships between observational and model variables, the potential offered by satellite data has not been fully used. As a matter of fact, a few hydrological studies that use remote sensing data emanating from different sources (sensors, platforms) have been performe…