Abstract
Flow duration curve (FDC) is a cumulative frequency curve that shows the percent of time a specific discharge has been equaled or exceeded during a particular period of time at a given river location, providing a comprehensive description of the hydrological regime of a catchment. Thus, relying on historical streamflow records, FDCs are typically constrained to gauged and updated ground stations. Earth Observations can support our monitoring capability and be considered as a valuable and additional source for the observation of the Earth’s physical parameters. Here, we investigated the potential of the surface reflectance in the Near Infrared (NIR) band of the MODIS 500 m and eight-day product, in providing reliable FDCs along the Mississippi River. Results highlight the capability of NIR bands to estimate the FDCs, enabling a realistic reconstruction of the flow regimes at different locations. Apart from a few exceptions, the relative Root Mean Square Error, rRMSE, of the discharge value in validation period ranges from 27–58% with higher error experienced for extremely high flows (low duration), mainly due to the limit of the sensor to penetrate the clouds during the flood events. Due to the spatial resolution of the satellite product higher errors are found at the stations where the river is narrow. In general, good performances are obtained for medium flows, encouraging the use of the satellite for the water resources management at ungauged river sites.
Highlights
IntroductionThe longer the period of observation on which flow duration curve (FDC) rely, the better the reliability of the statistical information gathered from them
The scarce availability of long and continuous time series of ground discharges brings the community to enlarge the sources of monitoring englobing the use of satellite remote sensing information
We investigated the possibility to describe the hydraulic regime through the reconstruction of flow duration curve (FDC) with the use of reflectance ratios from near infrared images, which recently have demonstrated their capability to describe the variability of the river flows with good accuracy [11,12,13,25]
Summary
The longer the period of observation on which FDCs rely, the better the reliability of the statistical information gathered from them. In light of the common data scarcity, the hydrological community and practitioners generally agree on the assumption that a reliable and accurate FDC requires river flow records covering a period of at least 10 years. Due to the discontinuity and lack of data for a large number of rivers worldwide, the possibility of building reliable FDCs is problematic, even in developed areas. Characterized by a global coverage and continuous monitoring over time (at least for the mission period), satellite data can be complementary to ground hydro-monitoring data providing possibly additional information for river monitoring [6]
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