HR: 09:30h
AN: H21J-07    [Abstracts]
TI: What is the ability of distributed hydrologic models to reproduce observed spatial soil moisture fields?
AU: * Gebremichael, M
EM: mekonnen@engr.uconn.edu
AF: University of Connecticut, 261 Glenbrook Rd., U-2037, Storrs, CT 06269, United States
AU: Vivoni, E R
EM: vivoni@nmt.edu
AF: New Mexico Tech, 801 Leroy Place, Socorro, NM 87801, United States
AB: A common approach of evaluating distributed hydrologic models is to compare predicted and observed streamflows. Although the total runoff generated in a watershed is compared with observed sreamflow, it is often difficult to understand what is going on inside the watershed as many possible scenarios can result in the same integrated response. Spatiotemporal datasets from intensive hydrological field experiments offer opportunities to validate the spatial hydrologic fields estimated by distributed hydrologic models and tie the integrated basin response to the internal soil moisture field. In this study, we use spatial soil moisture observations gathered during the Southern Great Plains 1997 (SGP97) field experiment in the Little Washita watershed (central Oklahoma) to evaluate the accuracy of simulated soil moisture fields from a distributed hydrologic model known as tRIBS (TIN-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator). The soil moisture observations are from the aircraft- based ESTAR (Electronically Steered Thinned Array Radiometer) sensor as well as in-situ field observations. The results of this study will be useful for assessing the utility of distributed hydrologic models to examine the spatial properties of hydrologic fields.
DE: 1855 Remote sensing (1640)
DE: 1866 Soil moisture
DE: 1873 Uncertainty assessment (3275)
DE: 1879 Watershed
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting