Estimación desde satélites de la dinámica de área inundada y altura hidrométrica en ríos de la Cuenca del Plata

SALVIA, MARÍA MERCEDES; GRINGS, FRANCISCO MATIAS; BARRAZA, VERONICA; PERNA, PABLO; FERRAZZOLI, PAOLO; KARSZENBAUM HAYDEE

Santa Fe

Congreso; 2º Congreso Internacional de Hidrología de Llanuras; 2014

Universidad Nacional del Litoral

Flooding is a major concern in the Plata Basin. In particular, Paraná River has a long and wide floodplain, which has been settled and cultivated. Therefore, providing information about the current state of the basin hydrologic condition in a systematic way is critical to the regional economies and society. Especially, monitoring basin floodplain wetlands flood-drought cycles is extremely important. These ecosystems extend along the Paraná-Paraguay axis and have highly dynamic exchanges of water with the river, presenting important annual and interannual variations. In this context, both floodplain water level and flooded area become relevant proxies for the total water volume inside the floodplain. Moreover, the dynamics of these variables will be a raw indicator of floodplain overall hydrological behavior. Therefore, estimating these variables in a systematic way using remote sensing data, it is possible to constrain the outputs of hydrological forecast models. In this paper, a methodology to retrieve flooded area and water level in herbaceous wetlands, based on active/passive microwave data and an emission model is presented. We compare our results with microwave altimetry data, and analyzed floodplain behavior during flooding and ?unflooding? phases by studying the relationship between fraction of flooded area (ff) vs floodplain water level (WL).