WATER BALANCE BASED ON REMOTE SENSING DATA IN PANTANAL

Abstract

Water storage in a drainage basin determines its water security. The quantity of water retained in the watershed can be measured by means of the water balance calculation. This balance can be defined by the input of water subtracted from the outputs. However, for the Pantanal, the measurements of water inlet and outlet are expensive, which makes the use of remote sensing data a high impact tool with clear socioeconomic advantages. Studies of water availability with orbital sensors are relatively scarce in the Upper Paraguay Basin (BAP). This work is an attempt to estimate the BAP water balance using rainfall and evapotranspiration remote sensing data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and the MODIS Global Evapotranspiration Project (MOD16), respectively. The results indicate that BAP had an annual surplus of water between 2000 and 2014, though water parameters seem weakly correlated at annual basis. However, there may be atmospheric-climatic phenomena that maximize the correlation between the hydrological parameters and the temperature anomaly with delays of 2 to 5 years, suggesting lagged teleconnections with QBO and ENSO.