Monitoring climate-driven and anthropogenic impacts on hydrology and agriculture in South-Eastern Australia in the 21st century

<p>With the climate change, drought events likely become more frequent and severe in Australia, where the worst droughts were recorded during the 21st century. Particularly, in the South-East of the country, the so called "Millennium Drought" showed below average annual precipitation for an entire decade. The precipitation record was then increased by extreme precipitation events generated from the La Ni&#241;a events in 2010 and 2011. Afterwards, dry conditions began again to develop. The climate-driven events and anthropogenic adaptions to the circumstances resulted in strong impacts on the hydrological resources and agricultural production. In fact, simulating hydrological processes within the (semi-)arid region of South-East Australia is very challenging especially during extreme events. In previous studies, we found a strong underestimation of the decline of total terrestrial water storage (TWS) and of groundwater in comparison to remote sensing data and in-situ station networks. Thus, we successfully calibrated the W3RA water balance model and simultaneously assimilated TWS anomalies obtained from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission to improve the model's skill during extreme meteorological conditions. In this presentation, we focus on the comparison of remote sensing observations and W3RA simulations after implementing the calibration and data assimilation with existing data records on anthropogenic intervention into the water cycle, as well as on agricultural production. Our results indicate high correlations between meteorological, hydrological and agricultural variables, and we observe strong similarities in the long-term trends and break points.</p>

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Analysing the Impact of Climate Change on Hydrological Ecosystem Services in Laguna del Sauce (Uruguay) Using the SWAT Model and Remote Sensing Data

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs13102014 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (10) ◽

pp. 2014

Author(s):

Celina Aznarez ◽

Patricia Jimeno-Sáez ◽

Adrián López-Ballesteros ◽

Juan Pablo Pacheco ◽

Javier Senent-Aparicio

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Remote Sensing ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Water Resources ◽

Swat Model ◽

Remote Sensing Data ◽

Erosion Control ◽

Sensing Data ◽

Extreme Precipitation Events ◽

The Impact

Assessing how climate change will affect hydrological ecosystem services (HES) provision is necessary for long-term planning and requires local comprehensive climate information. In this study, we used SWAT to evaluate the impacts on four HES, natural hazard protection, erosion control regulation and water supply and flow regulation for the Laguna del Sauce catchment in Uruguay. We used downscaled CMIP-5 global climate models for Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 projections. We calibrated and validated our SWAT model for the periods 2005–2009 and 2010–2013 based on remote sensed ET data. Monthly NSE and R2 values for calibration and validation were 0.74, 0.64 and 0.79, 0.84, respectively. Our results suggest that climate change will likely negatively affect the water resources of the Laguna del Sauce catchment, especially in the RCP 8.5 scenario. In all RCP scenarios, the catchment is likely to experience a wetting trend, higher temperatures, seasonality shifts and an increase in extreme precipitation events, particularly in frequency and magnitude. This will likely affect water quality provision through runoff and sediment yield inputs, reducing the erosion control HES and likely aggravating eutrophication. Although the amount of water will increase, changes to the hydrological cycle might jeopardize the stability of freshwater supplies and HES on which many people in the south-eastern region of Uruguay depend. Despite streamflow monitoring capacities need to be enhanced to reduce the uncertainty of model results, our findings provide valuable insights for water resources planning in the study area. Hence, water management and monitoring capacities need to be enhanced to reduce the potential negative climate change impacts on HES. The methodological approach presented here, based on satellite ET data can be replicated and adapted to any other place in the world since we employed open-access software and remote sensing data for all the phases of hydrological modelling and HES provision assessment.

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A simple distributed water balance model for an urbanized river basin using remote sensing and GIS techniques

Geocarto International ◽

10.1080/10106049.2018.1557261 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 35 (9) ◽

pp. 954-975

Author(s):

Olutoyin Adeola Fashae ◽

Rotimi Oluseyi Obateru ◽

Adeyemi Oludapo Olusola

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Water Balance ◽

River Basin ◽

Remote Sensing And Gis ◽

Water Balance Model ◽

Balance Model ◽

Gis Techniques

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Estimation of flooded area in the Bahr El-Jebel basin using remote sensing techniques

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions ◽

10.5194/hessd-3-1851-2006 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 1851-1877 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

M. A. H. Shamseddin ◽

T. Hata ◽

A. Tada ◽

M. A. Bashir ◽

T. Tanakamaru

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Water Balance ◽

Lake Victoria ◽

Open Water ◽

Unsupervised Classification ◽

Water Balance Model ◽

Balance Model ◽

Water Evaporation ◽

Flooded Area ◽

Remote Sensing Techniques

Abstract. In spite of the importance of Sudd (swamp) area estimation for any hydrological project in the southern Sudan, yet, no abroad agreement on its size, due to the inaccessibility and civil war. In this study, remote sensing techniques are used to estimate the Bahr El-Jebel flooded area. MODIS-Terra (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) level 1B satellite images are analyzed on basis of the unsupervised classification method. The annual mean of Bahr El-Jebel flooded area has been estimated at 20 400 km2, which is 96% of Sutcliffe and Park (1999) estimation on basis of water balance model prediction. And only, 53% of SEBAL (Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land) model estimation. The accuracy of the classification is 71%. The study also found the swelling and shrinkage pattern of Sudd area throughout the year is following the trends of Lake Victoria outflow patterns. The study has used two evaporation methods (open water evaporation and SEBAL model) to estimate the annual storage volume of Bahr El-Jebel River by using a water balance model. Also the storage changes due time is generated throughout the study years.

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Regime transitions of Australian climate and climate extremes

10.5194/wcd-2021-72 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jorgen Segerlund Frederiksen ◽

Stacey Lee Osbrough

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

21St Century ◽

Climate Extremes ◽

Early 21St Century ◽

Australian Climate ◽

Average Maximum ◽

Eastern Australia ◽

Maximum Temperatures ◽

The 1960S ◽

Regime Transitions

Abstract. Systematic changes, since the beginning of the 20th century, in average and extreme Australian rainfall and temperatures indicate that Southern Australian climate has undergone regime transitions into a drier and warmer state. South-west Western Australia (SWWA) experienced the most dramatic drying trend with average streamflow into Perth dams, in the last decade, just 20 % of that before the 1960s and extreme, decile 10, rainfall reduced to near zero. In south-eastern Australia (SEA) systematic decreases in average and extreme cool season rainfall became evident in the late 1990s with a halving of the area experiencing average decile 10 rainfall in the early 21st century compared with that for the 20th century. The shift in annual surface temperatures over SWWA and SEA, and indeed for Australia as a whole, has occurred primarily over the last 20 years with the percentage area experiencing extreme maximum temperatures in decile 10 increasing to an average of more than 45 % since the start of the 21st century compared with less than 3 % for the 20th century mean. Average maximum temperatures have also increased by circa 1 °C for SWWA and SEA over the last 20 years. The climate changes are associated with atmospheric circulation shifts and are indicative of second order regime transitions, apart from extreme temperatures for which the dramatic increases are suggestive of first order transitions.

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Using Remote Sensing Techniques to Improve Hydrological Predictions in a Rapidly Changing World

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs13193865 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (19) ◽

pp. 3865

Author(s):

Yongqiang Zhang ◽

Dongryeol Ryu ◽

Donghai Zheng

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Anthropogenic Impacts ◽

The Earth ◽

Wide Range ◽

Important Challenge ◽

Flood Simulations ◽

Remote Sensing Techniques ◽

Evapotranspiration Estimation ◽

Ecohydrological Processes ◽

Changing World

Remotely sensed geophysical datasets are being produced at increasingly fast rates to monitor various aspects of the Earth system in a rapidly changing world. The efficient and innovative use of these datasets to understand hydrological processes in various climatic and vegetation regimes under anthropogenic impacts has become an important challenge, but with a wide range of research opportunities. The ten contributions in this Special Issue have addressed the following four research topics: (1) Evapotranspiration estimation; (2) rainfall monitoring and prediction; (3) flood simulations and predictions; and (4) monitoring of ecohydrological processes using remote sensing techniques. Moreover, the authors have provided broader discussions, on how to make the most out of the state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques to improve hydrological model simulations and predictions, to enhance their skills in reproducing processes for the fast-changing world.

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