HR: 12:05h
AN: H21H-08    [PDF]
TI: Everglades' hydrology from space
AU: * Wdowinski, S
EM: shimonw@rsmas.miami.edu
AF: University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149-1098 United States
AU: Amelung, F
EM: famelung@rsmas.miami.edu
AF: University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149-1098 United States
AU: Miralles-Wilhelm, F
EM: fmiralle@rsmas.miami.edu
AF: University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149-1098 United States
AU: Dixon, T
EM: tdixon@rsmas.miami.edu
AF: University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149-1098 United States
AU: Carande, R
EM: carande@vexcel.com
AF: Vexcel Corporation, 4909 Nautilus Court, Boulder, CO 80301 United States
AB: The Everglades region in south Florida is a unique ecological environment. Anthropogenic changes in the past 50 years, mainly for water supply, agricultural development and flood control purposes, have disrupted natural water flow and severely impacted the regional ecosystem. Currently, Everglades' flow is controlled by a series of structures (e.g., levies, gates), which provide a large-scale natural laboratory for monitoring and modeling wetland surface flow. Everglades' water level is currently monitored by about 100 stations, about half of which provide real-time data. We use space-based Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to monitor water level variations in the entire Everglades region with a high spatial resolution (~30 x 30 m$^{2}$). Our data consists of three 225x75 km$^{2}$ swaths of eastern South Florida, acquired in June, August and December 1994 by the L-band (1.275 GHz) JERS satellite. A comparison between the space-based InSAR observations and 28 ground-truth stage station data points shows a remarkable agreement. The most significant water level changes are observed in the northern section of the study area, known as Water Conservation Areas (WCA) 1, 2A, and 2B. Our results show dynamic water topography caused by gate operation on man-made levees. The data show up to 1 m of elevation difference across 5-15 km length scale. We detected both regional N-S unidirectional and radial topography patterns. We model the dynamic water topography using 1-D unidirectional and radial diffusion flow models. Our models allow us to determine a regional-scale flow conductivity parameter, which reflects the resistance to water flow due to vegetation. Future 2-D numerical flow models will enable us to determine local variations of the conductivity parameter as well as better tools for modeling and managing surface flow in the Everglades.
UR: http://www.geodesy.miami.edu/~amelung/everglades/
DE: 1243 Space geodetic surveys
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
DE: 1890 Wetlands
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting