scholarly journals Large-scale groundwater modeling using global datasets: a test case for the Rhine-Meuse basin

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 2555-2608 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. H. Sutanudjaja ◽  
L. P. H. van Beek ◽  
S. M. de Jong ◽  
F. C. van Geer ◽  
M. F. P. Bierkens

Abstract. Large-scale groundwater models involving aquifers and basins of multiple countries are still rare due to a lack of hydrogeological data which are usually only available in developed countries. In this study, we propose a novel approach to construct large-scale groundwater models by using global datasets that are readily available. As the test-bed, we use the combined Rhine-Meuse basin that contains groundwater head data used to verify the model output. We start by building a distributed land surface model (30 arc-second resolution) to estimate groundwater recharge and river discharge. Subsequently, a MODFLOW transient groundwater model is built and forced by the recharge and surface water levels calculated by the land surface model. Although the method that we used to couple the land surface and MODFLOW groundwater model is considered as an offline-coupling procedure (i.e. the simulations of both models were performed separately), results are promising. The simulated river discharges compare well to the observations. Moreover, based on our sensitivity analysis, in which we run several groundwater model scenarios with various hydrogeological parameter settings, we observe that the model can reproduce the observed groundwater head time series reasonably well. However, we note that there are still some limitations in the current approach, specifically because the current offline-coupling technique simplifies dynamic feedbacks between surface water levels and groundwater heads, and between soil moisture states and groundwater heads. Also the current sensitivity analysis ignores the uncertainty of the land surface model output. Despite these limitations, we argue that the results of the current model show a promise for large-scale groundwater modeling practices, including for data-poor environments and at the global scale.

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 2913-2935 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. H. Sutanudjaja ◽  
L. P. H. van Beek ◽  
S. M. de Jong ◽  
F. C. van Geer ◽  
M. F. P. Bierkens

Abstract. The current generation of large-scale hydrological models does not include a groundwater flow component. Large-scale groundwater models, involving aquifers and basins of multiple countries, are still rare mainly due to a lack of hydro-geological data which are usually only available in developed countries. In this study, we propose a novel approach to construct large-scale groundwater models by using global datasets that are readily available. As the test-bed, we use the combined Rhine-Meuse basin that contains groundwater head data used to verify the model output. We start by building a distributed land surface model (30 arc-second resolution) to estimate groundwater recharge and river discharge. Subsequently, a MODFLOW transient groundwater model is built and forced by the recharge and surface water levels calculated by the land surface model. Results are promising despite the fact that we still use an offline procedure to couple the land surface and MODFLOW groundwater models (i.e. the simulations of both models are separately performed). The simulated river discharges compare well to the observations. Moreover, based on our sensitivity analysis, in which we run several groundwater model scenarios with various hydro-geological parameter settings, we observe that the model can reasonably well reproduce the observed groundwater head time series. However, we note that there are still some limitations in the current approach, specifically because the offline-coupling technique simplifies the dynamic feedbacks between surface water levels and groundwater heads, and between soil moisture states and groundwater heads. Also the current sensitivity analysis ignores the uncertainty of the land surface model output. Despite these limitations, we argue that the results of the current model show a promise for large-scale groundwater modeling practices, including for data-poor environments and at the global scale.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 5217-5250 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. E. M. de Graaf ◽  
E. H. Sutanudjaja ◽  
L. P. H. van Beek ◽  
M. F. P. Bierkens

Abstract. Groundwater is the world's largest accessible source of fresh water. It plays a vital role in satisfying needs for drinking water, agriculture and industrial activities. During times of drought groundwater sustains baseflow to rivers and wetlands, thereby supporting ecosystems. Most global scale hydrological models (GHMs) do not include a groundwater flow component, mainly due to lack of geohydrological data at the global scale. For the simulation of lateral flow and groundwater head dynamics a realistic physical representation of the groundwater system is needed, especially for GHMs that run at finer resolution. In this study we present a global scale groundwater model (run at 6' as dynamic steady state) using MODFLOW to construct an equilibrium water table at its natural state as the result of long-term climatic forcing. The aquifer schematization and properties were based on available global datasets of lithology and transmissivities combined with estimated aquifer thickness of an upper unconfined aquifer. The model is forced with outputs from the land-surface model PCR-GLOBWB, specifically with net recharge and surface water levels. A sensitivity analysis, in which the model was run with various parameter settings, showed variation in saturated conductivity causes most of the groundwater level variations. Simulated groundwater heads were validated against reported piezometer observations. The validation showed that groundwater depths are reasonably well simulated for many regions of the world, especially for sediment basins (R2 = 0.95). The simulated regional scale groundwater patterns and flowpaths confirm the relevance of taking lateral groundwater flow into account in GHMs. Flowpaths show inter-basin groundwater flow that can be a significant part of a basins water budget and helps to sustain river baseflow, explicitly during times of droughts. Also important aquifer systems are recharged by inter-basin groundwater flows that positively affect water availability.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Sun ◽  
Daniel S Goll ◽  
Jinfeng Chang ◽  
Philippe Ciais ◽  
Betrand Guenet ◽  
...  

<p>Future land carbon (C) uptake under climate changes and rising atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> is influenced by nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) constraints. A few existing land surface models (LSMs) account for both N and P dynamics, but lack comprehensive evaluation. This will lead to large uncertainty in estimating the P effect on terrestrial C cycles. With the increasing number of measurements and data-driven products for N- and P- related variables, comprehensive model evaluations on large scale is becoming feasible.</p><p>In this study, we evaluated the performance of ORCHIDEE-CNP (v1.2) which explicitly simulates N and P cycles in plant and soil, in four aspects: 1) terrestrial C fluxes, 2) N and P fluxes and budget, 3) leaf and soil stoichiometry and 4) resource use efficiencies. We found that ORCHIDEE-CNP improves the simulation of the magnitude of gross primary productivity (GPP) due to more realistic strength of the CO<sub>2</sub> fertilization effect of GPP than the without-nutrient-version ORCHIDEE. However, ORCHIDEE-CNP cannot capture the positive and increasing C sink in North Hemisphere over past decades, which is mainly due to that a large fraction of N and P ‘locked’ in soil organic matter cannot be re-allocated into vegetation and leads to a strong N and P limitation on plant growth. ORCHIDEE-CNP generally simulates comparable global total N and P fluxes (e.g. N biofixation, P weathering, N and P uptake etc.) for both natural and agricultural biomes. Overall, ORCHIDEE-CNP doesn’t performance worse in C fluxes than ORCHIDEE, and gives reasonable N and P cycles, which is acceptable in simulating the coupling relationships between C, N and P cycles can be used to explore the nutrient limitations on land C sink from present to the future. </p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Long Yang ◽  
James A. Smith ◽  
Mary Lynn Baeck ◽  
Elie Bou-Zeid ◽  
Stephen M. Jessup ◽  
...  

Abstract In this study, observational and numerical modeling analyses based on the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) are used to investigate the impact of urbanization on heavy rainfall over the Milwaukee–Lake Michigan region. The authors examine urban modification of rainfall for a storm system with continental-scale moisture transport, strong large-scale forcing, and extreme rainfall over a large area of the upper Midwest of the United States. WRF simulations were carried out to examine the sensitivity of the rainfall distribution in and around the urban area to different urban land surface model representations and urban land-use scenarios. Simulation results suggest that urbanization plays an important role in precipitation distribution, even in settings characterized by strong large-scale forcing. For the Milwaukee–Lake Michigan region, the thermodynamic perturbations produced by urbanization on the temperature and surface pressure fields enhance the intrusion of the lake breeze and facilitate the formation of a convergence zone, which create favorable conditions for deep convection over the city. Analyses of model and observed vertical profiles of reflectivity using contoured frequency by altitude displays (CFADs) suggest that cloud dynamics over the city do not change significantly with urbanization. Simulation results also suggest that the large-scale rainfall pattern is not sensitive to different urban representations in the model. Both urban representations, the Noah land surface model with urban land categories and the single-layer urban canopy model, adequately capture the dominant features of this storm over the urban region.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1072-1087 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeugeniy M. Gusev ◽  
Olga N. Nasonova ◽  
Evgeny E. Kovalev ◽  
Georgii V. Aizel

Abstract In order to study the possibility of reproducing river runoff with making use of the land surface model Soil Water–Atmosphere–Plants (SWAP) and information based on global data sets 11 river basins suggested within the framework of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project and located in various regions of the globe under a wide variety of natural conditions were used. Schematization of each basin as a set of 0.5° × 0.5° computational grid cells connected by a river network was carried out. Input data including atmospheric forcing data and land surface parameters based, respectively, on the global WATCH and ECOCLIMAP data sets were prepared for each grid cell. Simulations of river runoff performed by SWAP with a priori input data showed poor agreement with observations. Optimization of a number of model parameters substantially improved the results. The obtained results confirm the universal character of SWAP. Natural uncertainty of river runoff caused by weather noise was estimated and analysed. It can be treated as the lowest limit of predictability of river runoff. It was shown that differences in runoff uncertainties obtained for different rivers depend greatly on natural conditions of a river basin, in particular, on the ratio of deterministic and random components of the river runoff.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Malbéteau ◽  
O. Merlin ◽  
G. Balsamo ◽  
S. Er-Raki ◽  
S. Khabba ◽  
...  

Abstract High spatial and temporal resolution surface soil moisture is required for most hydrological and agricultural applications. The recently developed Disaggregation based on Physical and Theoretical Scale Change (DisPATCh) algorithm provides 1-km-resolution surface soil moisture by downscaling the 40-km Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) soil moisture using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. However, the temporal resolution of DisPATCh data is constrained by the temporal resolution of SMOS (a global coverage every 3 days) and further limited by gaps in MODIS images due to cloud cover. This paper proposes an approach to overcome these limitations based on the assimilation of the 1-km-resolution DisPATCh data into a simple dynamic soil model forced by (inaccurate) precipitation data. The performance of the approach was assessed using ground measurements of surface soil moisture in the Yanco area in Australia and the Tensift-Haouz region in Morocco during 2014. It was found that the analyzed daily 1-km-resolution surface soil moisture compared slightly better to in situ data for all sites than the original disaggregated soil moisture products. Over the entire year, assimilation increased the correlation coefficient between estimated soil moisture and ground measurements from 0.53 to 0.70, whereas the mean unbiased RMSE (ubRMSE) slightly decreased from 0.07 to 0.06 m3 m−3 compared to the open-loop force–restore model. The proposed assimilation scheme has significant potential for large-scale applications over semiarid areas, since the method is based on data available at the global scale together with a parsimonious land surface model.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renaud Hostache ◽  
Dominik Rains ◽  
Kaniska Mallick ◽  
Marco Chini ◽  
Ramona Pelich ◽  
...  

Abstract. The main objective of this study is to investigate how brightness temperature observations from satellite microwave sensors may help in reducing errors and uncertainties in soil moisture simulations with a large-scale conceptual hydro-meteorological model. In particular, we use as forcings the ERA-Interim public dataset and we couple the CMEM radiative transfer model with a hydro-meteorological model enabling therefore soil moisture and SMOS-like brightness temperature simulations. The hydro-meteorological model is configured using recent developments of the SUPERFLEX framework, which enables tailoring the model structure to the specific needs of the application as well as to data availability and computational requirements. In this case, the model spatial resolution is adapted to the spatial grid of the satellite data, and the soil stratification is tailored to the satellite datasets to be assimilated and the forcing data. The hydrological model is first calibrated using a sample of SMOS brightness temperature observations (period 2010–2011). Next, SMOS-derived brightness temperature observations are sequentially assimilated into the coupled SUPERFLEX-CMEM model (period 2010–2015). For this experiment, a Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter is used and the meteorological forcings (ERA interim-based rainfall, air and soil temperature) are perturbed to generate a background ensemble. Each time a SMOS observation is available, the SUPERFLEX state variables related to the water content in the various soil layers are updated and the model simulations are resumed until the next SMOS observation becomes available. Our empirical results show that the SUPERFLEX-CMEM modelling chain is capable of predicting soil moisture at a performance level similar to that obtained for the same study area and with a quasi-identical experimental set up using the CLM land surface model. This shows that a simple model, when carefully calibrated, can yield performance level similar to that of a much more complex model. The correlation between simulated and in situ observed soil moisture ranges from 0.62 to 0.72. The assimilation of SMOS brightness temperature observation into the SUPERFLEX-CMEM modelling chain improves the correlation between predicted and in situ observed soil moisture by 0.03 on average showing improvements similar to those obtained using the CLM land surface model.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1163-1205 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Tian ◽  
X. Li ◽  
X.-S. Wang ◽  
B. X. Hu

Abstract. The water and energy cycles interact, making them generally closely related. Land surface models (LSMs) can describe the water and energy cycles of the land surface, but their description of the subsurface water processes is oversimplified, and lateral groundwater flow is ignored. Groundwater models (GWMs) well describe the dynamic movement of subsurface water flow, but they cannot depict the physical mechanism of the evapotranspiration (ET) process in detail. In this study, a coupled model of groundwater with simple biosphere (GWSiB) is developed based on the full coupling of a typical land surface model (SiB2) and a three-dimensional variably saturated groundwater model (AquiferFlow). In this model, the infiltration, ET and energy transfer are simulated by SiB2 via the soil moisture results given by the groundwater flow model. The infiltration and ET results are applied iteratively to drive the groundwater flow model. The developed model is then applied to study water cycle processes in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin in the northwest of China. The model is validated through data collected at three stations in the study area. The stations are located in a shallow groundwater depth zone, a deeper groundwater depth zone and an agricultural irrigation area. The study results show that the coupled model can well depict the land surface and groundwater interaction and can more comprehensively and accurately simulate the water and energy cycles compared with uncoupled models.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 615-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yixin Mao ◽  
Wade T. Crow ◽  
Bart Nijssen

Abstract. Soil moisture (SM) measurements contain information about both pre-storm hydrologic states and within-storm rainfall estimates, both of which are required inputs for event-based streamflow simulations. In this study, an existing dual state/rainfall correction system is extended and implemented in the 605 000 km2 Arkansas–Red River basin with a semi-distributed land surface model. The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite surface SM retrievals are assimilated to simultaneously correct antecedent SM states in the model and rainfall estimates from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. While the GPM rainfall is corrected slightly to moderately, especially for larger events, the correction is smaller than that reported in past studies due primarily to the improved baseline quality of the new GPM satellite product. In addition, rainfall correction is poorer in regions with dense biomass due to lower SMAP quality. Nevertheless, SMAP-based dual state/rainfall correction is shown to generally improve streamflow estimates, as shown by comparisons with streamflow observations across eight Arkansas–Red River sub-basins. However, more substantial streamflow correction is limited by significant systematic errors present in model-based streamflow estimates that are uncorrectable via standard data assimilation techniques aimed solely at zero-mean random errors. These findings suggest that more substantial streamflow correction will likely require better quality SM observations as well as future research efforts aimed at reducing systematic errors in hydrologic systems.


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