HR: 1340h
AN: H23E-1172    [Abstracts]
TI: Potential and feasibility of operating satellite sensor systems dedicated to monitoring inland water bodies
AU: * Fekete, B M
EM: balazs.fekete@unh.edu
AF: University of New Hampshire, Water Systems Analysis Group Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, Durham, NH 03824 United States
AU: Vorosmarty, C J
EM: charles.vorosmarty@unh.edu
AF: University of New Hampshire, Water Systems Analysis Group Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, Durham, NH 03824 United States
AB: The lack of adequate hydrological monitoring and the steady decline of hydrologic monitoring facilites are among the most important obstacles in the advancement of hydrological sciences and water resource management. Remote sensing (satelliteborne in particular) might be the only technology to provide the much needed data in a systematic global manner. Since none of the major existing sensor system are optimized for inland water monitoring a significant improvement is expected by designing and launching a dedicated satellite system. To assess how much improvement would be afforded by such a strategy and the feasibility of operating a such a system will require a ``hydrological testbed'' organized as an Observing System Simulation Environment (OSSE) that can be sampled virtually according to alternate satellite orbit configurations and sensor characteristics. We will discuss the potential of operating a satellite system dedicated to inland surface waters and the criteria designing such a system. We will demonstrate the use of a simple prototype OSSE to carry out virtual missions that could be used to assess the monitoring capabilities of different satellite orbit and sensor configurations and describe the current components of the virtual mission testbed plus its missing features that are essential for comprehensive analysis. We will present the first results applying the virtual mission testbed in its present form for altimeter sensors. We will demonstrate how to assess the achievable accuracies given various sensor characteristics, and orbital repeat frequencies.
DE: 1857 Reservoirs (surface)
DE: 1860 Runoff and streamflow
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting