Impact analysis of surface water level, discharge and storage change (DETECT-REDS)

Principal Investigator: Luciana Fenoglio (University of Bonn)

Co-Investigator(s): J. Indu, Jiaming Chen, Brigitte Gundlich, M. Evers, Jürgen Kusche

Collaborator(s): Christopher Buchhaupt

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DETECT-REDS (DETECT-REfecct-Discharge-Storage) continues the REFECCT project of the SWOT Science Team 2020-2023. The scientific goal of the first phase was to assess the suitability of the SWOT mission in the well-monitored Rhine River catchment. In the second phase we evaluate the scientific usability of the new SWOT data in inland waters and addresses new applications. The focus is on river discharge and storage change in rivers and lakes of medium and small size to access spatial and temporal detection limits of the space techniques. The analysis covers different climate zones in Europe (Alps, Southern-, Central-, Northern-, Eastern-Europe) and in Asia (Mahanadi river basin in India and Yangtze River basin in China).

Water surface elevations and discharge from multi-mission altimetry are merged in spatio-temporal maps and validated against in-situ and modeling results. Network and models are regionally available in central and northern Europe, while in China and in India less in-situ stations are available. In-situ data are densified with geodetic methods at selected locations to test hypothesis and new techniques.

Firstly, the DETECT-REDS project addresses the quality of the new data and investigates the impact of assimilating stage and discharge in a regional land model.

Secondly, the nadir-altimeter and SWOT data are combined to study the water flow along the complete rivers system, from river source to the coast. Land-ocean, river and lake interactions are investigated at long- and short term scales and at extremes.

Two research questions are formulated. The first to highlight limits and goods of the new data and the second to understand the compartment surface water in the context of water budget and climate change:

1. Can we fully exploit the new missions to derive water level, discharge, water storage change and hydrodynamic river processes.
2. Can we separate natural variability from human water use.