GC44B-05
Diffusion Modeling of Water Flow in the Congo Floodplains Using Geodetic and Remote Sensing Measurements
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 17:00
3003 (Moscone West)
Ting Yuan, University of Houston, Houston, TX, United States, Hyongki Lee, University of Houston, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Houston, TX, United States, Hahn Chul Jung, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States and Edward Beighley, Northeastern University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Boston, MA, United States
Abstract:
Congo Basin is the third largest in size (~3.7 million km2) and second only to Amazon in terms of discharge (~40, 200m3s-1 annual average). Hydrological flux in Congo Basin is of great importance to local and global climate, biogeochemical cycling. Whether water in wetlands comes from upland runoff or fluvial exchange could make a difference in the sediment supplies, carbon and nutrient exchange. The remote location and vast size of Congo Basin leaves remote sensing tool the only viable and effective tool to investigate its hydrodynamics and hydrology. In this study, we utilize water surface height from Envisat altimeter, precipitation from TRMM products and Hillslope River Routing (HRR) model derived upland runoff to simulate water elevations and river-floodplain exchange rate using 1-D diffusion model in the floodplain along the middle reach of Congo mainstem. The river-floodplain exchange rate estimated from this 1-D diffusion model is then compared with that derived from interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements and mass balance equation. Furthermore, we also examine the role of upland runoff, river-floodplain exchange and rainfall on flooding and draining of the floodplains along different reaches of the Congo mainstem.
