Monitoring flooded area fraction in floodplains of Paraná basin using passive and active microwave systems

M. SALVIA; F. GRINGS; H. KARSZENBAUM; P.PERNA; M.BARBER; P. FERRAZZOLI

Foz do Iguaçu

Congreso; 2010 The Meeting of the Americas; 2010

American Geophysical Union

The La Plata Basin (LPB) (Spanish: Cuenca del Plata) (gray area) is the name given to the 3,100,000 km hydrographical area that covers parts of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The precipitations falling within this area are collected by several rivers to finally reach the De La Plata River (main contributors Paraná and Uruguay rivers). One of the main issues is to monitor and predict the impact of global change and land use change (deforestation and replacement by intensive soy crop production) on regional weather, climate, hydrology and agriculture. More recently, extreme hydrological events (EHE) are affecting strongly different regions within this basin.This area is being addressed by a ESA SMOS AO project and a SACD-Aquarius NASA-CONAE project.Combined active and passive satellite microwave data is used to monitor the area. (see poster presentation).