Large-scale Modeling of Inundation in the Amazon Basin

Flood events have impacts on the exchange of energy, water and trace gases between land and atmosphere, hence potentially affecting the climate. The Amazon River basin is the world's largest river basin. Seasonal floods occur in the Amazon Basin each year. The basin being characterized by flat gradients, backwater effects are evident in the river dynamics. This factor, together with large uncertainties in river hydraulic geometry, surface topography and other datasets, contribute to difficulties in simulating flooding processes over this basin. We have developed a large-scale inundation scheme in the framework of the Model for Scale Adaptive River Transport (MOSART) river routing model. Both the kinematic wave and the diffusion wave routing methods are implemented in the model. A new process-based algorithm is designed to represent river channel - floodplain interactions. Uncertainties in the input datasets are partly addressed through model calibration. We will present the comparison of simulated results against satellite and in situ observations and analysis to understand factors that influence inundation processes in the Amazon Basin.