Measuring river slope using spaceborne GNSS reflectometry: Methodology and first performance assessment

River slope, a crucial parameter in hydrological modeling, has historically been difficult to measure continuously on a regional or global scale. Satellite altimetry missions often have long revisit times, such as 10 to 20 days for the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. In this paper, a novel approach is presented utilizing spaceborne GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) to measure river slopes with high accuracy and potentially short revisit times. Our Earth is enveloped in radio signals from over 100 GNSS satellites. These signals can be coherently reflected from river surfaces and detected by low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites with sufficient energy to estimate carrier phase. The carrier phase measurement captures water surface height variations, which can be extracted through modeling of the reflection signal propagation geometry and space environment effects to estimate river slopes. This study processes both the raw intermediate frequency (IF) data obtained by NASA’s Cyclone GNSS (CYGNSS) microsatellites and the grazing-angle GNSS-R data generated by Spire Global nanosatellites to demonstrate the feasibility and performance of the GNSS-R based river slope retrieval. This paper focuses on selected river sections with width greater than ∼ 500 meters. Detailed methodologies and error analyses are presented, indicating total uncertainty of approximately 0.38 cm/km plus ionospheric TEC model error for CYGNSS and 0.69 cm/km for Spire (with dual-frequency ionospheric correction) over an ideal 5-km river section at 30° elevation angle. The retrieval results are validated in areas with nearby flat water surfaces (such as lakes or wide and slow river sections) and against in situ gauge measurements and satellite altimetry, consistently demonstrating the high accuracy and reliability of spaceborne GNSS-R for measuring river slopes. • A novel method for measuring river slopes using spaceborne GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) is presented. • Detailed methodologies are provided for retrieving river slopes using GNSS-R raw IF data. • Error analysis shows an accuracy of sub-cm/km in river slope measurement. • The accuracy is validated using gauge, Sentinel-3, SWOT data, and geoid models over flat lake surfaces.