Vegetation characteristics can not only be used to derive spatial hydrodynamic roughness parameters but also to correct vegetation artefacts in freely downloadable Digital Elevation Models for hydrodynamic modelling. An exponential backscattering model for vegetation canopy height model was developed using standard deviation of cross polarization backscatter coefficient of Radarsat-2 SAR wide swath mode and in situ vegetation height data. The retrieved spatial vegetation height was used to correct vegetation artefacts in freely downloadable Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTERDEM) released in 2011. The relative spatial hydrodynamic roughness within a vegetation class was derived from cross polarization ratio. Preliminary results show that the accuracy of ASTERDEM improved the elevation estimates by root mean square error from 5.1 m to 3.0m. Simulation results using Earth Observation (EO) data for calibration and validation using an internal gauging station yielded promising Nash - Sutcliffe efficiency criterion of 0.38 and 0.45. The results shows that if high resolution DEM is available, spatial roughness parametrization using cross-polarization ratio of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery may be useful in modelling extensive floodplains where optimization of roughness parameter is not necessary due to computational limitations.