An Integrative Information Aqueduct to Close the Gaps between Satellite Observation of Water Cycle and Local Sustainable Management of Water Resources

[EN] The past decades have seen rapid advancements in space-based monitoring of essential water cycle variables, providing products related to precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture, often at tens of kilometer scales. Whilst these data effectively characterize water cycle variability at regional to global scales, they are less suitable for sustainable management of local water resources, which needs detailed information to represent the spatial heterogeneity of soil and vegetation. The following questions are critical to effectively exploit information from remotely sensed and in situ Earth observations (EOs): How to downscale the global water cycle products to the local scale using multiple sources and scales of EO data? How to explore and apply the downscaled information at the management level for a better understanding of soil-water-vegetation-energy processes? How can such fine-scale information be used to improve the management of soil and water resources? An integrative information flow (i.e., iAqueduct theoretical framework) is developed to close the gaps between satellite water cycle products and local information necessary for sustainable management of water resources. The integrated iAqueduct framework aims to address the abovementioned scientific questions by combining medium-resolution (10 m-1 km) Copernicus satellite data with high-resolution (cm) unmanned aerial system (UAS) data, in situ observations, analytical- and physical-based models, as well as big-data analytics with machine learning algorithms. This paper provides a general overview of the iAqueduct theoretical framework and introduces some preliminary results.The authors would like to thank the European Commission and Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for funding, in the frame of the collaborative international consortium (iAqueduct) financed under the 2018 Joint call of the Water Works 2017 ERA-NET Cofund. This ERA-NET is an integral part of the activities developed by the Water JPI (Project number: ENWWW.2018.5); the EC and the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS, under grant 2018-02787); Contributions of B. Szabo was supported by the Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (grant no. BO/00088/18/4).Su, Z.; Zeng, Y.; Romano, N.; Manfreda, S.; Francés, F.; Ben Dor, E.; Szabó, B.... (2020). An Integrative Information Aqueduct to Close the Gaps between Satellite Observation of Water Cycle and Local Sustainable Management of Water Resources. Water. 12(5):1-36. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12051495S13612

Ground, Proximal, and Satellite Remote Sensing of Soil Moisture

Soil moisture (SM) is a key hydrologic state variable that is of significant importance for numerous Earth and environmental science applications that directly impact the global environment and human society. Potential applications include, but are not limited to, forecasting of weather and climate variability; prediction and monitoring of drought conditions; management and allocation of water resources; agricultural plant production and alleviation of famine; prevention of natural disasters such as wild fires, landslides, floods, and dust storms; or monitoring of ecosystem response to climate change. Because of the importance and wide‐ranging applicability of highly variable spatial and temporal SM information that links the water, energy, and carbon cycles, significant efforts and resources have been devoted in recent years to advance SM measurement and monitoring capabilities from the point to the global scales. This review encompasses recent advances and the state‐of‐the‐art of ground, proximal, and novel SM remote sensing techniques at various spatial and temporal scales and identifies critical future research needs and directions to further advance and optimize technology, analysis and retrieval methods, and the application of SM information to improve the understanding of critical zone moisture dynamics. Despite the impressive progress over the last decade, there are still many opportunities and needs to, for example, improve SM retrieval from remotely sensed optical, thermal, and microwave data and opportunities for novel applications of SM information for water resources management, sustainable environmental development, and food security

Comparison of sea-ice freeboard distributions from aircraft data and cryosat-2

The only remote sensing technique capable of obtain- ing sea-ice thickness on basin-scale are satellite altime- ter missions, such as the 2010 launched CryoSat-2. It is equipped with a Ku-Band radar altimeter, which mea- sures the height of the ice surface above the sea level. This method requires highly accurate range measure- ments. During the CryoSat Validation Experiment (Cry- oVEx) 2011 in the Lincoln Sea, Cryosat-2 underpasses were accomplished with two aircraft, which carried an airborne laser-scanner, a radar altimeter and an electro- magnetic induction device for direct sea-ice thickness re- trieval. Both aircraft flew in close formation at the same time of a CryoSat-2 overpass. This is a study about the comparison of the sea-ice freeboard and thickness dis- tribution of airborne validation and CryoSat-2 measure- ments within the multi-year sea-ice region of the Lincoln Sea in spring, with respect to the penetration of the Ku- Band signal into the snow

2016 International Land Model Benchmarking (ILAMB) Workshop Report

As earth system models (ESMs) become increasingly complex, there is a growing need for comprehensive and multi-faceted evaluation of model projections. To advance understanding of terrestrial biogeochemical processes and their interactions with hydrology and climate under conditions of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, new analysis methods are required that use observations to constrain model predictions, inform model development, and identify needed measurements and field experiments. Better representations of biogeochemistryclimate feedbacks and ecosystem processes in these models are essential for reducing the acknowledged substantial uncertainties in 21st century climate change projections