Assessment of GRACE and GLDAS Capabilities for Estimation of Water Balance in Large Scale Areas, a Case Study of Urmia Lake Watershed

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D. Student, Department of Water Structures Engineering, College of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University

2 Professor, Department of Water Structures Engineering, College of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University

Abstract

Due to lack of appropriate data, estimation of water balance components for large areas is usually problematic. Recent development of global databases based on satellite estimates as well as rapid progress in hardware and software for modeling of complex processes governing the water balance at the land surface, caused that many efforts employ these new tools to reduce the limitations in this field. Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) are two particular projects, which has recently been used by many scientists to estimate water balance in different regions of the world. Regarding the lack of attention to this free information in Iranian studies, this research aims at investigating the possibility of using these resources in estimating the water balance of Iran basins. Urmia lake watershed was selected as a study area and the water balance components were extracted from GRACE GLDAS data. Comparison of the estimated changes in total water balance of the basin by GRACE data and changes in the lake water volume based on observations showed a similar trend. Besides, estimation of annual variations in groundwater using GRACE and GLDAS showed suitability of GRACE data for study of the groundwater changes. Overall, the results of present study indicated that GRACE data can be used as an appropriate tool to perform a preliminary, rapid, and inexpensive assessment of water balance in watersheds of the country

Keywords

References

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Iran-Water Resources Research
Volume 10, Issue 1 - Serial Number 1
February 2014
Pages 51-62

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History

  • Receive Date: 21 November 2011
  • Accept Date: 12 August 2013

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