Reservoir boundaries segmentation with cloud cover on Landsat 7 / 8

2018-08-08

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Question

I'm dealing with reservoir boundaries segmentation. My study area is Vietnam and I try on Landsat 7 ETM+/8 dataset.

But at some point of time, cloud cover has covered almost reservoir water body. For example, with Tri An Reservoir (Landsat 8 dataset can be found at here), the water body has been covered by cloud (approx. 51.6%).

So there are anyways to recover the water pixels have been replaced by cloud pixels? For more explaination, could I get the water body under cloud cover as high accurate as possible?

Answer

You're out of luck. Cloud detection is hard problem. Cloud removal would require, well, reconstructing data you do not have.

The way this is most commonly dealt with is to use repeat photography to try to find a day when you can see what you're looking for. If this isn't possible, you're out of luck.