H43H-1634
Use of a Rainfall Runoff Model and Satellite Data Sets for Hydrological Studies of the Upper Contas Watershed, Brazil
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Tainá Martins Cunha1, Vitor Rebello1, Otto Corrêa Rotunno Filho1, Maria Claudia Barbosa1, Mariza Ramalho Franklin2,3 and Venkataraman Lakshmi4,5, (1)UFRJ Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, (2)CNEN National Nuclear Energy Commission, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (3)Institute for Radiation Protection and Dosimetry, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (4)University of South Carolina Columbia, Columbia, SC, United States, (5)Professor, Earth and Ocean Sciences, Columbia, SC, United States
Abstract:
Continuous in-situ monitoring of environmental variables is expensive and difficult to maintain. This is true specifically in large watersheds and remote areas in developing countries, with little infrastructure and limited resources, as well as in semiarid areas, where the lack of water may represent an obstacle to the regional economic and sustainable development. On the other hand, over the past two decades, various satellite data sets that can be used to generate land surface hydrological variables have been made available, as well as model data sets resulting from the assimilation of remotely sensed and in-situ data in land surface models. This work focuses on using these satellite datasets and model outputs for the hydrological modeling of an ungauged basin, wherein stream flow data are absent or insufficient and little or no observations of spatially variable hydrological quantities are carried out. This work will focus on a 18200km² semiarid catchment Upper Contas watershed in Northeastern Brazil. We will examine the performance of a rainfall runoff model by calibrating the parameters using (a) observed stream flows (b) soil moisture from the GLDAS model output for the periods 1982-present. We also examine the relationship between vegetation growth using NDVI from MODIS and the model generated soil moisture.
