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Information - HS52 Water storage, level and discharge from remote sensing and geodesy (co-listed in G & GI)
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The monitoring of river water levels and discharges, storage in lakes and reservoirs, and floodplain dynamics plays a key role in assessing water resources, understanding surface water dynamics, characterizing and mitigating water related risks and enabling integrated management of water resources and aquatic ecosystems. While in situ measurement networks play a central role in the monitoring effort, remote sensing techniques are expected to contribute in an increasing way, as they can provide with homogeneous and almost real time measurements over large areas, from local to basin wide, regional and global. Developing space technologies to monitor water levels, water storage and, hopefully, estimate river discharges would be a key contribution to the monitoring of global change –climate and anthropogenic- and its impacts.
This session concerns measurement and/or estimation of water levels, water storage and water discharge of surface water bodies such as rivers, lakes, floodplains and wetlands, through combined use of remote sensing, field measurement and modelling.
During the last ten to twenty years a large number of satellites and sensors have been developed and launched that allow to quantify and monitor the areas of open water bodies (passive microwaves, active microwaves and optical sensors ), the water levels (radar altimetry on satellites such as Topex Poseidon, ERS, GFO, Envisat and Jason), the global water storage and its changes (GRACE). River discharges, although a key variable of hydrological dynamics, still seem to be out of reach with available space techniques but can eventually be derived by combining space/insitu water level observations and modelling.
The session will be organized around four main questions :
1) What are the current performances of remote sensing measurements of these variables? How to quantify the accuracy and quality of satellite data, both a posteriori through comparison with in situ data and a priori for new incoming satellite data ?
2) What are the innovative contributions of these earth observation data in the understanding of hydrological processes and dynamics ?
3) How do satellite data contribute to hydrological modelling and forecasting ? How do their uncertainty propagates through processing chains and models ? How can they complement in situ data in an optimal way ?
4) What are the upcoming new technologies that will allow key improvements in the measurement of water levels, water storage and river discharges ?
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