Drought monitoring

Remote Sensing provides information about the past and a key issue in the strategic planning of water resources is the ability to have management tools available that can assess future changes. The hydrological model SWAT is used in this project as an operational drought monitoring system.

The linkage between the previous mentioned RS techniques (evapotranspiration, rainfall, soil moisture) and SWAT is spatial information on evapotranspiration, soil moisture, precipitation is required to force and calibrate the system. This opens the unique opportunity to integrate Remote Sensing with hydrological modeling.

The SWAT model will be set-up for the basin based on data on topography, land use and soil types. The TRMM derived precipitation will be used as input for the model. Using a recently developed approach the model will be calibrated using the earlier derived spatial temporal datasets of ET, soil moisture and groundwater storage. The approach implements the Parameter ESTimation software package to auto-calibrate the model using non-linear parameter optimization. The approach was previously set-up for ET only and needs therefore further refinement. The calibrated model will be validated using measure streamflow data of the Guadalquivir River.

Input datasets and preliminary results are ahown below.

Model inputs:

Elevation