- This paper presents an innovative approach, STREAM – SaTellite-based Run-off Evaluation And Mapping, to derive daily river discharge and run-off estimates from satellite observations of soil moisture, precipitation, and total water storage anomalies (TWSAs). Despite a very simple model structure, by directly ingesting observations of soil moisture and total water storage data, STREAM model allows the modeler to neglect processes that are implicitly accounted for in the input data and accurately estimate run-off and river discharge. Therefore, human-driven processes (e.g., irrigation, land use change), that are typically very difficult to model due to missing information, and that might have a large impact on the hydrological cycle, and hence on runoff, are modeled implicitly.