Development and evaluation of 0.05° terrestrial water storage estimates using Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) land surface model and assimilation of GRACE data

Accurate estimation of terrestrial water storage (TWS) at a high spatiotemporal resolution is important for reliable assessments of regional water resources and climate variability. Individual components of TWS include soil moisture, snow, groundwater, and canopy storage and can be estimated from the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) land surface model. The spatial resolution of CABLE is currently limited to 0.5∘ by the resolution of soil and vegetation data sets that underlie model parameterizations, posing a challenge to using CABLE for hydrological applications at a local scale. This study aims to improve the spatial detail (from 0.5 to 0.05∘) and time span (1981–2012) of CABLE TWS estimates using rederived model parameters and high-resolution meteorological forcing. In addition, TWS observations derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission are assimilated into CABLE to improve TWS accuracy. The success of the approach is demonstrated in Australia, where multiple ground observation networks are available for validation. The evaluation process is conducted using four different case studies that employ different model spatial resolutions and include or omit GRACE data assimilation (DA). We find that the CABLE 0.05∘ developed here improves TWS estimates in terms of accuracy, spatial resolution, and long-term water resource assessment reliability. The inclusion of GRACE DA increases the accuracy of groundwater storage (GWS) estimates and has little impact on surface soil moisture or evapotranspiration. Using improved model parameters and improved state estimations (via GRACE DA) together is recommended to achieve the best GWS accuracy. The workflow elaborated on in this paper relies only on publicly accessible global data sets, allowing the reproduction of the 0.05∘ TWS estimates in any study region.

A Proposed Land Exchange Algorithm for Eliminating the External Plot Patchwork

In many countries of the world, rural areas are characterized by a defective spatial structure of agricultural land. The most frequent defects are large fragmentation and distribution of farmland. The fragmentation of land has been an issue widely described by many authors throughout the world. The problem of the distribution of land owned by individual farmers is slightly different, since due to the complexity of the problem this issue was not widely explored in Poland (plot patchwork) or in other countries of Europe and the world. Land fragmentation and distribution of plots in rural areas has a negative effect on the profitability and efficiency of agricultural production. Land consolidation and exchange is an operation facilitating spatial structure improvement. The authors attempted to develop a universal land exchange algorithm for eliminating the external plot patchwork. As it turns out, so far no land exchange algorithm has been developed. Specific analyses were carried out in Puchaczów commune, county of Łęczna, Lublin voivodeship in the eastern part of Poland, covering an area of 6907.80 ha, split into 15,211 plots. The chequerboard arrays method was used. The publication presents the algorithm and its practical application using a test sample. A result of the studies is a proposal concerning the exchange of land between landowners in the villages of the commune of Puchaczów. Using the algorithm, the area of individual lands in the commune, after the exchange, will increase by 172.09 ha, which is 2.5% for the area of individual lands, and 1.9% for the commune.

Decision-making models using the Analytical Hierarchy Process in the urgency of land consolidation works

Poland is characterized by a number of factors which adversely affect the agricultural economy, so this paper will aim to present the possibilities of using multi-criteria decision-making methods of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the analysis of the spatial structure of rural areas. AHP is a widely used tool for making complex decisions based on a large number of criteria, such as, for example, land consolidation works on fragmented agricultural land. The first step is to formulate the decision-making process, then the assessment criteria and the solution variants guided by expert knowledge are determined.A ranking, according to which the order of land consolidation and land exchange works in the studied area should be determined, will be defined by using decision-making models of the AHP method. The basis for calculations will be the weights received for the factors/parameters defined for the five thematic groups. Calculations for individual villages will be made, and then the obtained results will allow creating a ranking for the studied commune, allowing for the effective (in terms of economic and socio-economic) spending of funds for this purpose. The presented method can be successfully used to conduct analogous analyses for any area.

Detection of groundwater storage variability based on GRACE and CABLE model in the Murray-Darling Basin

Monitoring groundwater storage is in great importance for economic and social development. In this paper, the monthly GRACE data from 2003 to 2015 is combined with the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) model to estimate the variations of groundwater storage (GWS) in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). The results show that (1) the simulations of TWS from CABLE are more accurate than GLDAS over the MDB, and there is a higher correlation coefficient of 0.94 and a lower RMSE of 15.74 between CABLE and GRACE. (3) The spatial pattern of GWS trends shows decline trends in the southwest, east and south, and increasing trends in the north and south central (3) For the whole MDB, the average GWS has strong seasonality and shows an increasing trend with a rate of 1.19 0.41 mmyyear between 2003 and 2015.

THE LAND REALLOCATION MODEL IN THE COURSE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND CONSOLIDATION IN UKRAINE

The issue of the effectiveness of agricultural land consolidation in the environment of land relations being reshaped, with Ukraine as the example has been scrutinized in the research. Land reallocation as the key constituent of land consolidation has been considered according to the existing approaches. Necessity for substantiation of the peerness of land plots to be reallocated has been singled out. Key factors influencing the peer agricultural land exchange in the process of reallocation have been defined. It is offered to define the peerness of agricultural land plots by a set of qualitative and spatial and technological characteristics. The improvement of the existing approaches to land reallocation by limiting for the reallocated land plots peerness by the preset characteristics has been suggested. The gist of the modelling is the minimization of distance from land plot to the farmhouse. Technical data characterizing the qualitative and spatial and technological characteristics of land plots at the reallotment have been defined. The assessment of the provided reallocation model with the example of the agricultural land mass has been provided. Land reallocation is accomplished by the voluntary land plot exchange. The analysis of the reallocation results using the provided model has been executed.

Evaluation of Model-Based Soil Moisture Drought Monitoring over Three Key Regions in China

Land surface models (LSMs) have been widely used to provide objective monitoring of soil moisture during drought, but large uncertainties exist because of the different parameterizations in LSMs. This study aims to evaluate the ability to monitor soil moisture drought over three key regions in China by using the Noah LSM from the Global Land Data Assimilation System, version 2 (GLDASv2), and the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) model that is currently used at the China Meteorological Administration. The modeled soil moisture drought indices were verified against the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), which served as a reference drought indicator over northern China (NC), northwestern China (NWC), and southwestern China (SWC) from 1961 to 2010. The results show that the precipitation forcing data that drive both LSMs have high accuracy when compared with local observational data. GLDASv2/Noah outperforms CABLE in capturing soil moisture anomalies and variability, especially in SWC, but both show good correlations with the 3-month SPEI (SPEI3) in NC, NWC, and SWC. The autumn drought of 2002 and spring drought of 2010 were selected for the comparison of the modeled drought categories with the SPEI3 drought category, where GLDASv2/Noah performed slightly better than CABLE. This work demonstrates that the choice of LSM is crucial for monitoring soil moisture drought and that the GLDASv2/Noah LSM can be a good candidate for the development of a new operational drought-monitoring system in China.

THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR USE THE PEER LAND EXCHANGE DURING LAND MANAGEMENT IN UKRAINE

The preconditions and general directions of inter economic land surveying in the modern conditions of Ukrainian in accordance to the perspectives of peer land exchange implementation have been analyzed. The measures, implementation of which is advisable based on peer land exchange as the key mechanism have been singled out and substantiated. According to the current legislation of Ukraine, the main types of documentation for land management, which may provide the peer land exchange are defined. Land exchange is a common way of streamlining existing land ownership and land use in domestic and foreign practice. In particular, an equivalent exchange is often aimed at regrouping a significant amount of land use in order to optimize their structure. At the present time, the coordination of the interests of landowners in the process of optimizing the multitude of land uses of settlements is of particular relevance. For example, there is a need to locate facilities that have environmental and social significance, improvement and changing boundaries of land management objects at different levels. In the context of certain tasks, given the legally defined issue of exchange agreements concluding, the settlement of the land exchange process requires a technical justification.