In this paper we present the preliminary results of a project devoted to use hydrologic and remote sensing models and data for water resource management in semi-arid regions. The project is developed in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso, where a set of high resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images was acquired. The rationale of the project along with the preliminary results obtained by the processing of high resolution Cosmo- SkyMed data are presented and discussed