The implementation of the GEOframe system in the Po river district – analysis of water availability and scarcity

In recent years, the frequency of extreme events like floods and droughts, which can cause severe environmental, social, and economic damage, has increased due to climate change and environmental alterations. In response to these challenges, the Po River Basin District Authority (AdBPo) initiated the implementation of the GEOframe modelling system across the entire district in 2021, in collaboration with the GCU-M (Gruppo di Coordinamento Unificato-Magre). The goal was to enhance the existing numerical models for water resource management, providing more accurate quantification and forecasting of spatial and temporal water availability across the Po River Basin, thereby improving overall planning and decision-making processes.

Additionally, a historical analysis of water availability was conducted in Valle d’Aosta and Piemonte, showcasing GEOframe's ability to simulate all key components of the water cycle, including evapotranspiration, water storage, snow accumulation, and water discharge. The implementation of GEOframe in these mountainous regions also underscored the critical role of snow and glaciers in determining water availability, particularly in the context of rising temperatures due to climate change. As a result, future developments of GEOframe will prioritize improving the modelling of these elements to better capture their influence on water resources in a warming climate. The short presentation given at IDRA24 can be obtained by clicking on the above figure.  The poster is available here. . 

Estimating water budgets with JGrass-NewAGE

We already talked about water budgets, and the papers of ours that deals with it (see below). Because in this Fall AGU meeting there was a dedicated session, we presented an abstract:

Recently we presented two papers one dedicated to the estimation of the water budget components in a small, basin, the Posina catchment [Abera et al., 2017], and the other in a large basin, the Blue Nile [Abera et al., 2017b]. Closing the budget in the two cases was different. Worth to say, it was much more difficult to close the budget at Posina, since at the large scale satellite platform can reasonably help to validate the results. At the smallest scale ground measurements usually available do not guarantee the closure of the budget without making additional hypothesis and remote sensing data cannot give very much help.  The hypothesis that we made is that the groundwater storage comes back to the initial level after a certain time, that we called Budyko time, TB. This time can be fixed arbitrarily, for instance, to five years and then varied to assess, through these trials the uncertainty of the budget. The large scale case was largely supported by remote sensing data, instead, either for calibration and/or validation. This contribution explains how we actually did, clarifies some aspects of the informatics necessary to obtain it and openly discusses the issues risen in our work. We also consider varying configuration of the water budget schemes at the subbasin level, and how this affects the estimates.

Finally we analyse the problem of travel times [e.g. Rigon et  al., 2016a, Rigon et al, 2016b]  as it comes out from considering the multiple fluxes and storages and discuss how much they can be realistic. All considerations and  simulations are based on the JGrass-NewAGE system [Formetta et al., 2014] and its evolution presented in Bancheri [2017].

As we say in the presentation, we could not talk about the travel times. However there are several other places where you can find about, here. 

Clicking on the above Figure, you will see the presentation that was used in NewOrleas. However, on Youtube, we uploaded an extended version with comments. 

References

Abera, W., Formetta, G., Borga, M., & Rigon, R. (2017). Estimating the water budget components and their variability in a pre-alpine basin with JGrass-NewAGE. Advances in Water Resources, 104, 1–18. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2017.03.010

Abera, W., Formetta, Brocca, L., & Rigon, R. (2017), Modelling the water budget of the Upper Blue Nile basin using the JGrass-NewAge model system and satellite data. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 3145–3165, 2017

Rigon, R., Bancheri, M., & Green, T. R. (2016). Age-ranked hydrological budgets and a travel time description of catchment hydrology. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 20(12), 4929–4947. http://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-4929-2016

Modelling the water budget of the Upper Blue Nile basin using the JGrass-NewAge model system and satellite data

This paper must be read after its companion on rainfall published in Atmospheric Research. There we were concerned with rainfall estimates over the large areas of Upper Blue Nile (UBN). Here we move on to estimate all the other components of the water budget. A similar goal was searched at small scales and with different tools, in this other paper about Posina catchment. So the paper can be considered sort of complimentary and covering a range of possibilities allowed by the JGrass-NewAGE system.

The paper abstracts reads: 

"The Upper Blue Nile basin is one of the most data-scarce regions in developing countries, hence, the hydrological information required for informed decision making in water resources management is limited. The hydrological complexity of the basin, tied with the lack of hydrometerological data, means that most hydrological studies in the region are either restricted to small subbasins where there are relatively better hydrometeorological data available, or at the whole basin scale but at very coarse time scales and spatial resolutions. In this study we develop a methodology that can improve the state-of-art by using the available, but sparse, hydrometerological data and satellite products to obtain the estimates of all the components of the hydrological cycle (precipitation, evapotranspiration, discharge, and storage). To this scope, we use the JGrass-NewAge system and various remote sensing products. The satellite products SM2R-CCI is used for obtaining the rainfall inputs; SAF EUMETSAT for cloud cover fraction for proper net radiation estimation; GLEAM for comparison with estimated ET; and GRACE gravimetry data for comparison of the total water storage amounts available. Results are obtained at daily time-steps for the period 1994-2009 (16 years), and they can be used as a reference for any water resource development activities in the region. The overall long term mean budget analysis shows that precipitation of the basin is 1360 ±230 mm per year. Evapotranspiration covers 56% of the yearly budget, runoff is 33%. Storage varies from minus 10% to plus 17% of the budget. "

The manuscript was submitted to HESS and went trough  a first round of revision (see the Discussion page). A revised manuscript was submitted. Please find below (on Zenodo):

• The answers to reviewers
• The new manuscript
• The complimentary material, including the shapefile of the UBN and the original figures.

The paper is now accepted and available at the HESS site.
   

A travel time model for estimating the water budget of complex catchments

This is the presentation given by Marialaura Bancheri for her admission to the final exam to achieve a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering. It contains a synthesis of her studies about spatially integrated models of the water budget, and about travel time theory. A model structure is also presented preliminarily containing five reservoirs.

These reservoirs model the hydrology  of a  Hydrologic Response Unit (HRU) of a basin  which are connected together to treat a river catchment (as shown in Rigon et al. 2016). The figure above is a Petri net representation of the set od ordinary differential equations that  constitute the mathematical models of a HRU. The model uses the river network structure to organise the components execution, a work made conjointly with Francesco Serafin.

By clicking on the Figure, you will see Marialaura's presentation.

Reservoirology #2

Because, as we already noticed, often modelling the hydrological cycle is studying the mutual interactions of "reservoirs" of something (which I named "reservoirology"), I tried with my students to have a clean way to represent reservoirs. As we said in the slides below, we try to represent them in a way that, if it is not in a one to one correspondence with the equations that can be derived from the graphs, we are as close as possible to it. This post, left for saving the history, is, however, superseded by the new post reservoirology #3.

Please find above this graphic collection and help us to improve it. One thing to notice is that our representation is mappable, with different expressivity of the concepts to the Petri Networks algebra, which puts in our hands several studies in mathematics, computer sciences, biology and other sciences.