HR: 0800h
AN: G11A-1191    [Abstracts]
TI: Monitoring Water Resources Status with Distributed Snowmelt Model
AU: * Artan, G
EM: gartan@usgs.gov
AF: SAIC, USGS National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS), Sioux Falls, SD 57198 United States
AU: Dwyer, J
EM: dwyer@usgs.gov
AF: SAIC, USGS National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS), Sioux Falls, SD 57198 United States
AU: Verdin, J
EM: verdin@usgs.gov
AF: USGS, USGS National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS), Sioux Falls, SD 57198 United States
AU: Budde, M
EM: mbudde@usgs.gov
AF: SAIC, USGS National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS), Sioux Falls, SD 57198 United States
AB: A large amount of the Afghanistan water supply comes from reservoirs fed by snowmelt runoff, therefore, monitoring the status of snow cover in key areas during the winter and spring is very import to the water resources and disaster management entities of the country. In this study we investigated the utility of monitoring the status of the snow over Afghanistan by employing a spatially distributed snow accumulation and ablation model forced solely with remotely sensed data, weather model assimilation fields, and globally available near-real time meteorological data. The snowmelt model we used was a spatially distributed version of the Utah Energy Balance (UEB) model. A fundamental input variable that went into the model was a dynamic MODIS-based albedo. The MODIS-based snow albedo we used was an integrated 8-days running average value calculated for areas that were established to be cloud-free by the MODIS cloud mask and snow covered by the MODIS snow algorithm (Klein and Stroeve, 2002). The modeled spatial distribution of snow water equivalent provided a good early indication of the relative magnitude of the water available in spring of 2005 for irrigation. The modeled snow water maps were also useful in mapping of basins that were likely to experience a higher risk for floods after the spring snow melts.
UR: http://earlywarning.usgs.gov/Afghan/product.php
DE: 0740 Snowmelt
DE: 0758 Remote sensing
SC: Geodesy [G]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005