Quantifying Uncertainty in Estimation of Potential Recharge in Tropical and Temperate Catchments using a Crop Model and Microwave Remote Sensing
Abstract
Groundwater recharge in a semi-arid region is generally low, but could exhibit high spatial variability depending on the soil type and plant cover. The potential recharge (the drainage flux just beneath the root zone) is found to be sensitive to water holding capacity and rooting depth (Rushton, 2003). Simple water balance approaches for recharge estimation often fail to consider the effect of plant cover, growth phases and rooting depth. Hence a crop model based approach might be better suited to assess sensitivity of recharge for various crop-soil combinations in agricultural catchments. Martinez et al. (2009) using a root zone modelling approach to estimate groundwater recharge stressed that future studies should focus on quantifying the uncertainty in recharge estimates due to uncertainty in soil water parameters such as soil layers, field capacity, rooting depth etc. Uncertainty in the parameters may arise due to the uncertainties in retrieved variables (surface soil moisture and leaf area index) from satellite. Hence a good estimate of parameters as well as their uncertainty is essential for a reliable estimate of the potential recharge. In this study we focus on assessing the sensitivity of crop and soil types on the potential recharge by using a generic crop model STICS. The effect of uncertainty in the soil parameters on the estimates of recharge and its uncertainty is investigated. The multi-layer soil water parameters and their uncertainty is estimated by inversion of STICS model using the GLUE approach. Surface soil moisture and LAI either retrieved from microwave remote sensing data or measured in field plots (Sreelash et al., 2012) were found to provide good estimates of the soil water properties and therefore both these data sets were used in this study to estimate the parameters and the potential recharge for a combination of soil-crop systems. These investigations were made in two field experimental catchments. The first one is in the tropical semi-arid region of South India (AMBHAS research observatory), wherein the recharge occurs mainly during the crop growth period and Indian summer monsoon (June-November). The second catchment is in the temperate climate region of South-east of France (Avignon), wherein recharge occurs during the winter when crop growth is minimal. The effect of parameter uncertainty on the potential recharge and its uncertainty is compared in these contrasting catchments. References Martinez, J.J., Skaggs, T.H., van Genuchten, M. Th. and Candela, L. (2009). A root zone modelling approach to estimating groundwater recharge from irrigated areas. Journal of Hydrology, 367,138-149 Rushton, K. R. (2003). Groundwater Hydrology. Conceptual and computational models, John Wiley, 416 p. Sreelash, K., Sekhar, M., Ruiz, L., Tomer, S. K., Guérif, M., Buis, S., Durand, P., and Gascuel-Odoux, C. (2012). Parameter estimation of a two-horizon soil profile by combining crop canopy and surface soil moisture observations using GLUE, Journal of Hydrology, 456-457, pp.57-67.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.H24C..05K
- Keywords:
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- 1829 HYDROLOGY / Groundwater hydrology;
- 1855 HYDROLOGY / Remote sensing;
- 1865 HYDROLOGY / Soils;
- 1873 HYDROLOGY / Uncertainty assessment