Remote Sensing and Hydrologic Modeling of Arid Watersheds: A Scale Analysis: Progress Report

摘要

The ultimate goal of this multiyear research effort is to model long-term (10 sup 2 --10 sup 4 yrs), cut and fill cycles in arid region fluvial systems (arroyos). Historic and geologic (late Quaternary) data bases indicate that arid region fluvial systems have oscillated between periods of pronounced aggradation and degradation. This cyclic behavior has affected both water and sediment discharge from arid watersheds as well as ecosystem habitats along hillslopes and valley bottoms. One of the primary causes that has been proposed for this cyclic activity is climatic change for gradual (glacial-interglacial) and catastrophic (volcanic eruptions, el Nino) rates of climatic change on a global scale. The immediate goal of this multiyear research effort is to modify existing numeric hydrologic models (SPUR, KINEROS) which utilize as input multilayered, co-registered remotely sensed data for the prediction of surface hydrology and sediment erosion, transport and deposition in arid region watersheds. It is hypothesized that different types of co-registered, remotely sensed data including digital elevation data sets (DEDS), multispectral scanner (TM, SPOT), and thermal infrared multispectral scanner (TIMS) can be used in conjunction with limited ground truth data to predict values of input parameters for numeric watershed hydrology models and thus to compute watershed hydrologic and sedimentologic characteristics. (ERA citation 13:049766)