H047-05
Development of an Operational Remote-Sensing Streamgaging System in Alaska to Support Water Resources Management

Tuesday, 8 December 2020: 17:46
Virtual
Robert W Dudley1, Heather R Best2, Charon M Birkett3, David M Bjerklie4, Jessica E Cherry5, Jeff Conaway2, Michael T Durand6, Jack Eggleston7, John Wesley Fulton8, Michael F Jasinski9, Benjamin Crane Johnson10, John W. Jones11, Joseph P Klein12, Michael Knapp13, Luke Sturtevant14 and John Trawicki15, (1)US Geological Survey, Augusta, ME, United States, (2)USGS Alaska Science Center, Anchorage, United States, (3)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)U.S. Geological Survey, East Hartford, CT, United States, (5)National Weather Service, Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center, Anchorage, United States, (6)Byrd Polar Research Center, Columbus, OH, United States, (7)U.S. Geological Survey, Hydrologic Remote Sensing Branch, Leetown, WV, United States, (8)USGS Colorado Water Science Center Denver, Denver, CO, United States, (9)NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (10)NOAA National Weather Service Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center, Anchorage, AK, United States, (11)U.S. Geological Survey, Hydrologic Remote Sensing Branch, Reston, VA, United States, (12)Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Anchorage, AK, United States, (13)Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities, Juneau, AK, United States, (14)USGS Geological Survey, Augusta, ME, United States, (15)USFWS, Anchorage, AK, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Streamflow monitoring provides valuable information for responsible management of water resources for water use, power generation, transportation, hazards, and wildlife and fisheries ecosystems. Remote regions with limited accessibility present challenges to traditional ground-based streamflow monitoring, making them expensive and potentially dangerous by placing equipment or individuals in the water. To address these challenges, we are undertaking a pilot effort to establish an operational streamgaging system in Alaska that makes use of satellites to remotely observe and estimate streamflow. Our goal is to provide observations of river water levels and estimates of streamflows for selected river reaches in Alaska. Historical Landsat, TOPEX, and Jason-2 data are leveraged to produce decades of historical streamflow. Our remote-streamgaging approach uses radar altimetry to measure river stage, and surface water extent interpreted from Landsat scenes to measure reach-averaged river width. Derived relations between altimetry and observed river water-surface widths are used with a modified Manning’s equation, calibrated to field observations, to estimate streamflow. Application of our remote-streamgaging methods at selected study reaches that have existing ground-based streamgages provide the means for evaluation of the workflow and accuracy of the approach. Normalized root mean square errors of satellite-derived streamflows relative to ground-based streamflows range from about 4 to 40 percent depending on the location, period, and data used. Automated scripting methods for data download and processing along with the development of graphic-user interfaces for working with satellite data all contribute toward our development of an operational system. Our methods at present make use of operational Jason-3 and Sentinel-3A altimetry data and Landsat scenes accessed from the USGS Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE) product website, and are designed to incorporate new kinds of altimetric and slope data, such as SWOT and Jason-CS, or surface-water extent interpreted from other optical data sets such as Sentinel-2A and ICESat-2 as they become available.
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