Resource information
Daily tropical rainfall measuring mission (TRMM)-based rainfall and Landsat-derived land-cover maps were used to retrospectively simulate runoff for the Black Volta Basin. This was to ascertain the usefulness of the increasingly available satellite observation data to augment ground-measured hydrometeorological data for unguaged basins or basins with inadequate data. Both visual and statistical comparison of TRMM-based rainfall with the gauged rainfall indicates that the monthly rainfall data are statistically comparable. Seasonal upward adjustment of the monthly TRMM-based rainfall improved the rainfall correlation giving a Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency of the simulated runoff of 89.5%. Thus, monthly TRMM-based rainfall estimate can be used to augment existing ground-measured rainfall data and together with Landsat-derived land-cover maps be used to estimate runoff for unguaged basins in the West African sub-region. The study is useful for Sub-Saharan Africa, where sustainable water management is sometimes hampered due to the absence of reliable and consistent data.
