Long‐term simulations of discharge and floods in the Amazon Basin
TLDR
In this paper, a terrestrial ecosystem model (integrated biosphere simulator (IBIS)) and a hydrological routing algorithm (HYDRA) are used in conjunction with long time series climate data to simulate the river discharge and flooded area of the Amazon/Tocantins River basin over the last 60 years.Abstract:
[1] A terrestrial ecosystem model (integrated biosphere simulator (IBIS)) and a hydrological routing algorithm (HYDRA) are used in conjunction with long time series climate data to simulate the river discharge and flooded area of the Amazon/Tocantins River basin over the last 60 years. Evaluating the results of this modeling exercise over the entire basin yields three major results: (1) Observations at 121 stations throughout the basin show that discharge is well simulated for most tributaries originating in Brazil. However, the discharge is consistently underestimated, by greater than 20%, for tributaries draining regions outside of Brazil and the main stem of the Amazon. The discharge underestimation is most likely a result of underestimated precipitation in the data set used as model input. (2) A new flooding algorithm within HYDRA captures the magnitude and timing of the river height and flooded area in relatively good agreement with observations, particularly downstream of the confluence of the Negro and Solimoes Rivers. (3) Climatic variability strongly impacts the hydrology of the basin. Specifically, we find that short (∼3–4 years) and long (∼28 years) modes of precipitation variability drive spatial and temporal variability in river discharge and flooded area throughout the Amazon/Tocantins River basins.read more
Citations
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The Amazon basin in transition
Eric A. Davidson,Alessandro Araújo,Alessandro Araújo,Paulo Artaxo,Jennifer K. Balch,Jennifer K. Balch,I. Foster Brown,I. Foster Brown,Mercedes M. C. Bustamante,Michael T. Coe,Ruth DeFries,Michael Keller,Michael Keller,Marcos Longo,J. William Munger,Wilfrid Schroeder,Britaldo Soares-Filho,Carlos Souza,Steven C. Wofsy +18 more
TL;DR: Signs of a transition to a disturbance-dominated regime include changing energy and water cycles in the southern and eastern portions of the Amazon basin.
Journal ArticleDOI
Flood inundation modelling
TL;DR: A review of state-of-the-art empirical, hydrodynamic and simple conceptual models for determining flood inundation is presented in this paper, where guidance is provided for selecting the most suitable method/model for solving practical flood related problems, taking into account the specific outputs required for the modelling purpose, the data available and computational demands.
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A physically based description of floodplain inundation dynamics in a global river routing model
TL;DR: In this article, a new global river routing model, CaMa-Flood, is proposed, which explicitly parameterizes the subgrid-scale topography of a floodplain, thus describing floodplain inundation dynamics.
Journal ArticleDOI
Simple spatially-distributed models for predicting flood inundation: A review
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the theoretical basis for modelling floodplain flow with simplified hydraulic treatments based on a dimensional analysis of the one-dimensional shallow water equations and then review how such schemes can be applied in practice and consider issues of space discretization, time discretisation and model parameterisation, before going on to consider model assessment procedures.
Journal ArticleDOI
Interannual variability of surface water extent at the global scale, 1993–2004
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented the first global data set that quantifies the monthly distribution of surface water extent at ∼25 km sampling intervals over 12 years (1993-2004) and showed that the data set can be extended with good confidence beyond 2000, using ERS and AVHRR mean monthly climatologies.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
An integrated biosphere model of land surface processes, terrestrial carbon balance, and vegetation dynamics
Jonathan A. Foley,I. Colin Prentice,Navin Ramankutty,Samuel Levis,David Pollard,Steven Sitch,Alex Haxeltine +6 more
TL;DR: The Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) as mentioned in this paper is a terrestrial biosphere model that integrates a wide range of biophysical, physiological, and ecological processes in a single, physically consistent modeling framework.
Journal ArticleDOI
A simple raster-based model for flood inundation simulation
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TL;DR: In this article, a model for simulating flood inundation is presented, which is designed to operate with high-resolution raster Digital Elevation Models, which are becoming increasingly available for many lowland floodplain rivers and is based on what is hypothesise to be the simplest possible process representation capable of simulating dynamic flooding.