Overview: There is currently a strong interest on understanding, assessing and minimizing the anthropic impacts on hydric resources, particularly by means of the investigation of the effect of removing the native land cover on the availability and quality of water. Hydrological modelling is an adequate tool to estimate the effects of land cover changes on hydric resources. However, hydrologic models demand a great amount of data, which are often not available. On the other hand, data obtained by remote sensing have proven themselves useful, for they are able of providing data for extensive and hard-access areas, such as the Amazon region. The project will incorporate data from orbital sensors (rainfall, temperature, vegetation indices etc.) to the hydrological modelling of the Ji-Paraná river basin, in order to assess the potentials and limitations of this approach on the study of impacts caused by changes in land use and land cover on hydrologic availability.

Objectives: The main objective of this project is to assess the benefits and difficulties of incorporating orbital sensors' data and hydrological modelling as a means of estimating impacts caused by land cover changes on the hydric availability in Amazonia. For that purpose, the MGB-IPH hydrological model will be used with data obtained from meteorological stations and orbital remote sensors. The SEBAL algorithm, which estimates the energy flows using data from remote sensors, will also be assessed. Both methods will be compared in order to evaluate the possibilities of integration among them.

Expected results: A database of hydrometeorological information on the studied basin, and a calibrated hydrological model for the region. The replacement of data from local meteorological stations by data collected by remote sensing systems will also be tested. Finally, comparisons of the simulated results of two distinct models for the region will be carried out.

TEAM

Leader: Daniel de Castro Victoria – Researcher – Embrapa Satellite Monitoring.

Institutions involved: Embrapa Monitoramento por Satélite, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura da Universidade de São Paulo (CENA/USP).