Thirty Years of Satellite Altimetry Technology: A Retrospective, Current Status, and Trend Analysis of Inland Water Body Monitoring Research

Abstract

Satellite altimetry has become an important tool for monitoring inland water dynamics and has been widely used for water-level retrieval, hydrological simulation, and flood–drought risk assessment. To review research progress and development trends over the past three decades, this study combines bibliometric analysis with a traditional review approach. A total of 4764 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1991 to 2025 were analyzed. Using VOSviewer_1.6.20 and CiteSpace_6.4, we constructed knowledge maps of publication trends, disciplinary intersections, author collaboration, keyword clustering, and burst evolution. Representative studies were further synthesized qualitatively. The results show that remote sensing, geology, and imaging science form the core disciplinary framework of this field. Research hotspots have shifted from single water-level observation to multi-parameter retrieval and integration with hydrological models. New missions, including Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) and Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), have improved spatial resolution and coverage, accelerating the development of this field. However, agricultural water management and the integration of artificial intelligence with hydrological models remain limited. Key challenges include monitoring small and complex water bodies, multi-source data fusion, uncertainty quantification, physics-informed artificial intelligence, and operational applications.