Modelling runoff using optical satellite remote sensing data in a high mountainous alpine catchment of Italy

Abstract

Development of hydrological models for seasonal and real-time runo forecast in rivers of high alpine catchments is useful for management of water resources. The conceptual models for this purpose are based on a temperature index and/ or energy budget and can be either lumped or distributed over the catchment area. Remote sensing satellite data are most useful to acquire near real-time geophysical parameters in order to input to the distributed forecasting models. In the present study, integration of optical satellite remote sensing-derived information was made with ground meteorological and hydrological data, and predetermined catchment morphological parameters, to study the feasibility of application of a distributed temperature index snowmelt runo model to one of the high mountainous catchments in the Italian Alps, known as Cordevole River Basin. Five sets of Landsat Multispectral Scanning System (MSS) and Thematic Mapper (TM) computer-compatible tapes (CCTs) were processed using digital image processing techniques in order to evaluate the snow cover variation quantitatively. Digital elevation model, slope and aspect parameters were developed and used during satellite data processing. The satellite scenes were classi®ed as snow, snow under transition and snow free areas. A second-order polynomial ®t has been attempted to approximate the snow depletion and to estimate daily snow cover areal extent for three elevation zones of the catchment separately. Model performance evaluation based on correlation coecient, Nash±Sutclie coecient and percentage volume deviation indicated very good simulation between measured and computed discharges for the entire snowmelt period. The use of average temperature values computed from the maximum and minimum temperatures into the model was studied and a suitable algorithm was proposed.

Diagnostic calibration of a hydrological model in a mountain area by hydrograph partitioning

“…To describe significant heterogeneity of temperature, precipitation, snow, and glacier, distributed hydrological models are generally used for precipitation-runoff modeling in mountain regions (Daly et al, 2000;Klok et al, 2001). Also, the utilization of remote-sensing products of precipitation and snow cover data in mountain runoff modeling has become more popular in recent years (Swamy and Brivio, 1997;Akyurek et al, 2011;. Most of these studies report sound simulation results.…”

Operational snow modeling: Addressing the challenges of an energy balance model for National Weather Service forecasts

“…There has been much written regarding the potential for improving snowmelt estimation and the subsequent streamflow forecasts through better estimates of initial states and the use of advanced models and data products (Perkins, 1988;Day et al, 1989;Swamy and Brovio, 1997;Marks et al, 1999;Carroll et al, 2001;Walter et al, 2005;Shamir and Georgakakos, 2006;Lehning et al, 2006). The National Weather Service (NWS), responsible for short-and longterm streamflow predictions across the United States, uses the SNOW17 model (Anderson, 1973) as part of their river forecast system.…”

Study on snowmelt runoff simulation in the Kaidu River basin

“…The SRM accepts either the daily mean temperature (T avg ) or the average of the daily maximum temperature (T max ) and the daily minimum temperature (T min ), while using measured data directly is generally unreasonable. Swamy [10] calculated several values for T avg through various combinations of hourly observed data, and the simulation study indicated that using the average of measured T max and T min led to a decrease in accuracy during some periods. In order to obtain the representative basin mean temperature, Richard et al [9] attempted different weighting methods for data collected from several stations and showed that different temperature inputs may cause a large difference [9] .…”

“…Thus, it is necessary that the measured data should be representative of the altitude. As in earlier research work, the measured data can be directly used by the model when the gauge stations are sufficient or the basin area is very small [9][10][11] .…”