On the night of 5 to 6 June, an explosion ruptured the dam of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel family of satellites allow us to monitor the scale of the huge environmental disaster in the Kherson region. The map output shows the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), used to detect water surfaces calculated from Sentinel-3 data. Spectral bands 6 (green 560 nm) and 17 (near infrared 856 nm) were used to calculate the NDWI. The Sentinel-2 true-colour scene from 3 June 2023 was chosen as the background data.
A GIF created using the Sentinel Hub website shows a time series of Sentinel-3 images in false colors (bands 17,5,2). Visually, the Dnieper River spill after the dam breach can be distinguished.
