27 April 2007

Water Management Progress Report

Quarterly Update

Jan.-March 2007

1.  **PROJECT MANAGEMENT SUMMARY**

• NASA\'s 2007 Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences:
[ROSES](http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?method=init&solId={E529A93E-C05F-7B1E-680D-D5C7488C2F6C}&path=open)
are now available on-line
(http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/index.do). ROSES has an
announcement of opportunity for Decision Support Systems, including
Water Management, within the NASA Applied Sciences Program. An optional
Notice of Intent is due by 15 March with full proposals due by 25 May
2007.

• David Toll, Lawrence Friedl, Jared Entin and Edwin Engman gave the
presentation "Potential Support of the NASA Water Management Program for
Capacity Building Programs in Latin America" at the "Third Integrated
Global Water Cycle Observations (IGWCO) Planning Meeting", National
Academy of Sciences, 14-17 March. Engman chaired the IGWCO session on
"Applications and Capacity Building" and is in the process of completing
a summary.

• David Toll and Ted Engman hosted the January 2007 \"Advisory Committee
on Water Information\'s (ACWI\'s)" Subcommittee on Hydrology (SOH)
quarterly meeting at NASA/GSFC. David Toll, Lawrence Friedl, Jared Entin
and Edwin Engman presented "NASA Water Science and Applications" (see
http://wmp.gsfc.nasa.gov/plans/).

• David Toll and Frances Verter (NASA/GSFC/SAIC) developed and updated
the "Water Management Program -- Projects" web site
(http://wmp.gsfc.nasa.gov).

**•** Ted Engman (NASA/GSFC/SAIC) attended the "GEO Inland and Near
Coastal Water Quality Remote Sensing Workshop" in Geneva, Switzerland
March 27-29. Engman will work with the Workshop Working Group to help
fit their activities within the GEOSS Framework. A primary objective of
the workshop and working group is to provide immediate, two year, and
ten year remote sensing of water quality plans. Engman is also working
with David Toll, Lawrence Friedl, Jared Entin of NASA and with Tricia
Bergmann (EPA), and Paul DiGiacomo (NOAA) to coordinate an interagency
response to the workshop results.

• David Toll, Edwin Engman, Lawrence Friedl and Jared Entin summarized
"Improving Water Management Decision Support Tools Using NASA Satellite
and Modeling Data" in to the first ACWI-SOH Newsletter
(http://acwi.gov/hydrology/index.html).

• David Toll, Edwin Engman, Venkat Lakshmi (Univ. South Carolina), and
Hugo Berbery (Univ. MD) had a Telecon to discuss potential NASA plans
and possible support for "Capacity Building and Applications in Latin
America" in support of the GEO Task Water 06-07.

• Ted Engman helped to develop a new project proposal for a NASA
contribution to NASA-ESA cooperation.  The project outline targets the
use of GRACE data for estimating ground water reservoir changes as a
contribution to ESA-TIGER-AQUIFER project.  Engman participated in a
telecom with ESA and NASA staff to discuss this proposal.

• Ted Engman, Shahid Habib, Stephen Ambrose, and Fritz Policelli (NASA)
completed the paper "Satellites, A Source of Water Cycle Information for
Water Resources Management, for the 32nd International Society of Remote
Sensing of the Environment Symposium.

• Ted Engman delivered a presentation "Predicting African Water Reserves
Using Satellite Observations" to a USAID representative visiting GSFC.

• Lawrence Friedl, Jared Entin, David Toll and Ted Engman prepared a
paper "Opportunities for the Water Resources Community in NASA's Applied
Sciences Program" for the American Society of Civil Engineers
Environmental and Water Resources Institute meeting in May.

• Ted Engman, Shahid Habib, Stephen Ambrose, and Fritz Policelli
prepared a paper "The Hydrologic Cycle and the Sustainability of Water
Resources" for an Elements of Life, a WMO publication being coordinated
by Steve Ambrose (NASA-HQ) and Shahid Habib (GSFC).

• Ted Engman  participated in the  the U.S. National Committee for
UNESCO IHP (International Hydrologic Program) at the national Academy of
Sciences on April 25.  Engman gave the committee a summary on the HELP
(Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy) program and the North
America HELP activities.  HELP is one of two cross cutting programs
within IHP, the other being FRIEND - Flow Regimes from International
Experimental and Network Data.

-   

2.  **PROJECT UPDATES**

Projects Reporting for this time period are summarized below. The other
NASA Water Management Projects will report in a subsequent update.

**2.1 Title: Use of NASA Products to Improve AWARDS ET Toolbox in the
Middle Rio Grande**

**Investigators**: David Toll (NASA/GSFC), E. Engman (NASA/GSFC/SAIC),
Kristi Arsenault (UMBC/GEST/NASA/GSFC) Mutlu Ozdogan (NASA/GSFC/ORAU),
Jiarui Dong (UMBC/GEST), Luis Gustavo de Goncalves (NASA/GSFC/ORAU), S.
Bowser (BoR), R. Stodt (BoR/TSC), S. Hunter (BoR), A. Brower (BoR), R.
Allen (U. Idaho), and A. Pinheiro (NOAA/NCEP)

2.1.1 NASA LIS Land Surface Modeling

[Middle Rio Grande (MRG) In Situ Reference Data Analysis]{.underline}

We have compared the Land Information System (LIS) atmospheric model
forcing variables (including incoming solar radiation, temperature,
precipitation, specific humidity, air pressure, and wind speed) with in
situ measurements taken at the Sevilleta sites in New Mexico and found
large differences for the precipitation. All of the other atmospheric
forcing variables agreed very well.

We also evaluated the in-situ surface latent and sensible heat fluxes
and the atmospheric forcing data based on the quality and accuracy of
closing the surface energy budget (SEB). In most cases, the energy
budget is not closed and this non-closure can be attributed to: a) short
time scale (averaged to hourly) of observations; b) downward shortwave
radiation and heat flux measurement being made at different location;
and c) lack of ground heat flux measurements. We have soil temperature
measurements (although depth is unknown for some sites) that could be
used as a surrogate for ground heat flux.  In light of this non-closure
of the surface energy budget, additional options will be used to assess
the quality of in-situ measurements.  These include spikes in the data
(that can be screened by looking at 1,2,3 standard deviation form the
mean), unrealistic values of each variable (based on long term, 5 year,
statistics), and ground heat flux computed as a residual of SEB having a
very large/small unrealistic value. 

[Noah Land Surface Model]{.underline}

We met with staff members, led by Michael Ek and Ken Mitchell of the
NOAA NWS NCEP to assist with understanding and calibrating the Noah Land
Surface model within LIS for the Middle Rio Grande site. We have
performed the LIS Noah simulation by using both NLDAS and in situ
forcing at this selected site, and found that both simulations contain a
large bias in the sensible heat and latent heat fluxes in spring and
summer seasons. However, the sum of the sensible and latent heat fluxes
from model simulations shows a good agreement with the in-situ
measurements, which implies errors resulting from the partitioning
between the sensible and latent heat fluxes in the model simulations. We
further used LIS to investigate the possible factors affecting the
estimation of the energy fluxes. We next applied irrigation to the Noah
LSM and obtained close agreement with the reference data, including the
partitioning of sensible and latent heat fluxes

[Catchment Land Surface Model]{.underline}

We are also in the process of evaluating the NASA Catchment land surface
model within LIS to improve our modeled water and energy fluxes.  The
Catchment model is unique in the sense that the spatial partitioning of
the land surface is accomplished by natural catchment boundaries rather
than regularized grids as in other models such as Noah. The natural
catchment boundaries are delineated from high spatial resolution (\~90
meters) digital topography datasets and are used to derive
topography-related hydrological parameters such as depth of the
groundwater table.  The Catchment model was designed to represent the
shallow groundwater table and hence should capture and represent the
lateral movements of water that feed the riparian zone in our study
area.  Our primary goal is to calibrate the location and size and flux
magnitude of the wet zone predicted by the Catchment model with the size
of the riparian zone observed by remote sensing (MODIS and Landsat) as
well as with the magnitude of in-situ fluxes.  Once calibrated, we
expect that we can use the Catchment model in prognostic mode to predict
fluxes in the riparian area.  We have currently estimated all of the
topography and soil related parameters.  Currently we are in the process
of driving the Catchment model with LIS forcing and parameter data.

[CLM Land Surface Model]{.underline}\
\
Ana Pinheiro and others implemented assimilation capabilities, specific
to the Community Land Model, Version-2 (CLM2.0), within the Land
Information System (LIS). These capabilities allow for the assimilation
of land surface temperature (satellite and ground based) fields into
CLM\'s land surface temperature related prognostic variables within LIS.
We evaluated the methods and model performance at a riparian site within
the MRG region. Preliminary results suggest that the model  has a
positive bias in the temperature related fields. The assimilation of
surface temperature into LIS-CLM2 improves the model temperature-related
diagnostic variables. Our initial tests also suggest that for the
current implementation 1) at least 50 ensembles are required to obtain
optimal results; 2) that the assimilation performance is proportional to
the accuracy of the assimilated temperature; and 3) that the frequency
and time of assimilation has significant impact on the assimilation
performance. In addition, and for this particular riparian scenario, the
experiment suggest that CLM2 has limitations in the physical
parameterization of vegetation for arid systems, as it does not account
for root access to the water table, and irrigation. The current
assimilation scheme shows a weak connection between soil moisture and
temperature fields, and little skill in improving the surface fluxes. To
address these limitations, we propose to review the assimilation
implementation and propagate the surface temperature updates to the
energy flux calculation modules. To minimize the warm  bias in the
model, we propose to implement a temperature bias correction. All
studies until now relied on in situ data to evaluate the system, and no
satellite product has yet been assimilated. Assimilation of remotely
sensed LST will necessarily required a customized approach for each
different product.

[Land Cover Classification]{.underline}

We developed a high spatial resolution (i.e. Landsat scale) basic land
cover dataset for the study area circa year 2000.  The land-cover
classes include the riparian zone and irrigated cropland fields.  This
dataset also extends beyond the riparian and agricultural zones to
include adjacent arid and semi-arid cover. It will be used to replace
existing low resolution land cover dataset to reflect the actual
location of the riparian zone as well as irrigated lands.  We plan to
use this dataset within the NOAH land surface model to more accurately
describe the locations of the riparian and irrigation modules that we
are concurrently developing.

[Satellite Derived ET]{.underline}

The University of Idaho (UI) is leading an effort to provide improved ET
Toolbox information primarily through the use of NASA MODIS and Landsat
data. UI has ported the METRIC remote sensing energy balance procedure
from a Landsat image basis to also include MODIS. The ET information has
been used to develop calibrated Kc curves (Kc is the ratio of actual ET
from a specific pixel or area to weather-based reference ET). ET derived
from Landsat images have been used to validate MODIS based ET maps and
to assist with development of automated calibration of MODIS based
METRIC. The calibrated Kc curves represent the specific land cover and
conditions of the 4 km x 4 km cell grids of AWARDS.

Application of METRIC to the same area using MODIS and Landsat imagery
for year 2002 had been produced previously. . Recently 21 2005 MODIS
image dates were selected for processing for the year 2005. The MODIS
image dates were selected to limit satellite sensor view angles to less
than about 15 degrees for the areas of interest, along with cloud free
conditions.

The METRIC satellite derived ET estimates were extended from daily to
monthly values using the Reference ET evaporative fraction. Use of
reference ET for extrapolation of instantaneous ET to 24-hour and longer
periods compensates for regional advection effects that can cause ET to
exceed daily net radiation in many arid or semi-arid locations.
Reference ET was calculated on an hourly basis using the 2005 ASCE-EWRI
standardized Penman-Monteith method applied to two automated weather
stations operated by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD).
The two stations, Angostura and Jarales, were selected due to their
completeness of record, quality of data, and location within the
corridor. A quality control analysis on the data was also completed and
is available.

**2.2 Improving USBR Water Supply Forecasts in the Yakima River Basin
using NASA Satellite and Modeling Products**

**Investigators**: Kristi Arsenault, Steven Hunter, Richard Stodt,
Warren Sharp, David Toll and Edwin Engman

For the past few months, significant progress has been made on
validating several years of Terra and Aqua MODIS snow cover products in
the state of Washington against in-situ SNOTEL (Snow Telemetry) snow
measurements. The purpose of this work is not only to validate but to
also analyze and test the MODIS snow cover product which is to be
assimilated in to the Land Information System (LIS) land surface model
(LSM) simulations. The MODIS products were further validated and
analyzed with respect to local topography and vegetation information.
The Terra MODIS snow cover product is found to do better overall when
compared to the Aqua MODIS snow cover product, and validates well
against the SNOTEL data. The Terra snow cover product has now been
processed and set up for the LSM assimilation process in LIS for the
Yakima Basin. Currently, the LIS simulations will downscale and use the
North American LDAS (NLDAS) forcing dataset This forcing dataset was
also validated in this region against the SNOTEL meteorological
instruments and other local weather data collected by the USBR and USGS.
The NLDAS forcing dataset was shown to have a cool bias in the winter
months and warm bias in the summer months for the temperature field, and
an overall underestimation in precipitation and snowfall amount and
intensity in the mountain regions. Based on the results gathered so far,
a preliminary Validation and Verification (V&V) report has been drafted
with the anticipation that additional results will be included once all
final analyses are completed for this region.

The USBR co-investigators have completed processing the four years of
SNODAS data (from NOHRSC) for the four Yakima River sub-basins and the
individual hydrological units. They have supplied the USGS and USBR's
Yakima Office partners the main validated year (2005) of SNODAS data to
be benchmarked within the Modular Modeling System (MMS) --
Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS), operationally set up for
the Yakima Basin. The new MMS-PRMS runs will then be tested in RiverWare
and benchmarked. The future results will be included in the final
Benchmark Report to NASA Headquarters.

**2.3** **Improving NOAA/NWS River Forecast Center Decision Support with
NASA Satellite and Land Information System Products**

**Investigators**: P. Restrepo (NOAA/NWS/OHD), A. Limaye (MSFC GHCC)
Christa Peters-Lidard (NASA GSFC), C. Laymon (MSFC/USRA/GHCC), W.
Crosson (MSFC/USRA/GHCC), M. Estes (MSFC/USRA/GHCC), Z. Al-Hamden
(MSFC/USRA/GHCC), D.L. Rickman (NASA/MSFC), F. Cosgrove
(SAIC/NASA/GSFC), M. Garcia (UMC/GEST/NASA/GSFC), V. Koren
(NOAA/NWS/OHD), D.J. Seo (UCAR/NOAA/NWS/OHD), M. Smith (NOAA/NWS/OHD),
D. Toll (NASA/GSFC), and P. Houser (GMU/IGES/CREW)

The 2006 funding for OHD (Office of Hydrology Development) was never
received, and it seems that it will not be received. OHD has been in
contact with Stennis Space Center regarding this issue.

# Coordination Meeting

The project teams met in person and by telecom on 2/26/2007 to discuss
project progress. Among the topics discussed were personnel changes in
the GSFC team; the possibility of using GOES cloud cover to fill-in gaps
of missing data from the MODIS sensors; and the need to do benchmarking
with streamflow. Among the action items: Christa Peters-Lidard and
Kristi Arsenault will look at what SNOTEL data are available. Pedro
Restrepo will check with OHD/IT to procure login ID and additional disk
space for the GSFC team working on OHD's systems.

# MSFC/USRA 

## Phase 1 Activities

**Objective**: to assess the utility of MODIS cloud mask product in
conjunction with cloud ceilometer data from the Automated Surface
Observation System (ASOS) stations to improve potential evaporation
component of the National Weather Service River Forecast System (NWSRFS)
hydrologic modeling system.

-   MSFC team is finalizing its evaluation report of NWSRFS hydrologic
    modeling input data requirements.

```{=html}
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```
-   The spatial and temporal extent of this study area has been
    redefined to cover the entire OHD distributed hydrologic modeling
    domain (Figure 1). This is a significant enlargement over original
    project concepts and will require additional data processing. The
    NOAA effort includes all 23 of the Texas watersheds used in the
    ongoing OHD hydrologic modeling study.

-   At present, we are generating cloud mask, incoming solar radiation
    and potential evaporation time series for one of the watersheds in
    the study domain. The watershed was selected in coordination with
    the Phase 2 modeling efforts.

![](media/image1.png){width="5.992361111111111in"
height="3.533333333333333in"}

Figure 1. Study area for Phase 1 of the project (green box). The
background image shows 23 Texas watersheds (shaded in purple) chosen for
the NOAA distributed modeling and calibration effort.

# GSFC

## Phase 1 Activities.

Solid progress has been made over the first few months of the joint NASA
--GSFC/NOAA-OHD/NASA-Marshall Sacramento flood modeling project. The
code for the Sacramento and Snow17 models was obtained from NOAA OHD
researchers, and intensive collaborative integration work has resulted
in the "beta" installation of Sacramento within LIS. Several comparison
runs have been conducted between the OHD and NASA-LIS implementations of
the Sacramento model (using the DMIP1 basins and forcing as a comparison
framework), and results have indicated that the two implementations
yield comparable simulations. In particular, differences between model
runs are less than 0.01 degrees C and 0.02 mm water in state variables.
Disk space has just been secured on a NOAA OHD computing platform, and
current work is emphasizing compiler and computer platform uniformity. A
test case based on DMIP2 forcing and parameters will soon be conducted.

Along with successful model integration work, the NASA/NOAA project team
has also chosen a final set of test basins for the broader project.
These include the DMIP2 American, Illinois, and Carson basins in
California, Oklahoma, and Nevada. Multiple group project meetings have
yielded final project plans addressing experiment design and data
assimilation activities, and the project team is in a good position to
integrate results from NASA Marshall's research as it is made available.

![](media/image2.wmf){width="4.122916666666667in"
height="3.2576388888888888in"}

# Office of Hydrologic Development

## Phase 1 Activities.

The OHD Team made significant progress toward integration of NWS
decision support models in LIS, in acquisition and preparation of data
for the Oklahoma, California and Texas test areas, and in developing
model parameters for verification and benchmarking.

OHD transferred the NOAA/NWS decision-support models to NASA/GSFC for
integration into LIS. OHD provided the source codes and description of
parametric data, input fluxes, and states for the modified
rainfall-runoff model (SAC-HT), the snow accumulation/ablation model
(SNOW-17), and the kinematic routing model (RUTPIX). OHD assisted GSFC
in implementation of SAC-HT into LIS by providing test data sets and in
diagnosis of simulation results.

OHD put all data for the basic lumped and distributed model simulations
in place for the basins in the Oklahoma DMIP2 domain. OHD has also
developed the lumped \'standard\' model parameters. OHD recently
processed the NARR data to derive monthly values of PE for the modeling
periods. Streamflow simulation using this PE may be compared with that
from the MODIS-aided PE, under development by the MSFC Team.

For the basins in the California test area, OHD put in place all basic
(i.e. non-HMT) data for the basic lumped and distributed models,
including gridded precipitation and temperature from NCDC and SNOTEL
data. These gridded data \'mimic\' the lumped data used by the RFCs for
model calibration. OHD is working to resurrect software generated by
Shuzheng Cong to compute gridded estimates of precipitation and
temperature from NCDC and SNOTEL data to extend the basic data through
2006/7.  Once these are extended, we will insert the HMT data for
specific events into the time series. NSSL, ESRL and HMT are due to
provide OHD with the advanced HMT data from one event for evaluation
sometime in April.

For the Texas test area, OHD obtained precipitation (MAP and MAPX) and
streamflow (QIN and QME) data from the NWS West Gulf River Forecast
Center for the following basins: GNVT2, LYNT2, MCKT2, MDST2, MTPT2,
QLAT2, REFT2, SBMT2, SCDT2, SDAT2, SKMT2, SOLT2, UVAT2, ATBT2. They will
be used for streamflow simulation using MODIS-aided PE.

**2.4 Enhancing Water Management Decision Support Systems with High
Spatio-temporal Resolution Mapping of Actual Evapotranspiration**

**PI:** Graeme Aggett, Riverside Technology inc

-   June 26^th^-29^th^ 2006: Project team met at Northern Colorado Water
    Conservation District (NCWCD) for METRIC training (delivered by Dr.
    Rick Allen and Dr. Ricardo Trezza, University of Idaho). The aim of
    this intense and very successful four day training session was to
    expose all team members to the METRIC model and related
    environmental bio-physics to ensure all team members have an
    understanding of the science underlying the strategies to enhance
    water DSS (Figure 1). This meeting also provided the opportunity for
    project kickoff and planning meetings.

> Attendees:
>
> Graeme Aggett (RTi)
>
> Claudio Schneider (RTi)
>
> Chris Woodward (RTi)
>
> Tammy Hamer (RTi)
>
> Chris McColl (Central Washington University)
>
> Warren Sharp (USBR-UCAO Yakima, WA)
>
> Mary Hattendorf (NCWCD)
>
> Scott Bartling (NCWCD)

-   September-October 2006: Landsat (2001) and MODIS (2005) image
    processing and preparation for METRIC modeling (RTi).

Optimal imagery for backcasting work has been selected and pre-processed
for METRIC image processing. Landsat and MODIS imagery has been compared
to more fully understand the utility of the coarser spatial scale MODIS
imagery for conducting basic crop-mapping, and subsequent utilization of
the thermal band for METRIC modeling.

-   October 2006 -- Planning and data sharing meeting at NCWCD (Aggett,
    Hattendorf, Bartling);

Mary Hattendorf is facilitating use of NCWCD weather station network
data, including processing and input into METRIC models.

-   November 2006 -- Aggett traveled to WA to meet with Warren Sharp and
    Ed Young (USBR), Anna Lael (KCCD) and Chris McColl (CWU) to plan
    YRII activities in the Pacific Northwest.

-   RTi begin image processing component of backcast modeling work by
    METRIC processing of 2001 Landsat data (see Figure 2).

![](media/image3.png){width="0.7076388888888889in"
height="3.263888888888889in"}

**Figure 2.** Irrigated crop parcels mapped using a 2005 Landsat image
(left), and corresponding METRIC ET model output image (right) for a
region of the south Platte River basin, Colorado.

-   RTi has developed an ESRI ArcServer web mapping application for
    serving ET data via the web (Figure 3). Currently, spatially
    distributed ET data may be queried, and zonal statistics tools may
    be used to calculate summary statistics of ET for an area of
    interest (either drawn on screen with a digitizing tool, or based on
    user selection of polygons, e.g. watershed boundaries, irrigated
    crop parcels etc). This prototype application will ultimately enable
    operators of water DSS (SPDSS and RiverWare) to make desktop spatial
    queries of distributed ET data as it is made available in quasi-
    real time, and to ingest the results of this information into
    various models. This GIS information can be obtained without the
    need for expensive GIS licenses, and customization of these tools
    will make it very easy to obtain the necessary skills to use this
    NASA ET application.

![](media/image6.png){width="6.465972222222222in"
height="4.910416666666666in"}

**3.0 ISSUES AND CONCERNS**

• There were several problems with dissemination of funds from NASA ASP
to the Restrepo and Nghiem projects. Start up funding has been delayed
for the project "Improving Flash Flood Prediction through a Synthesis of
NASA Products, NWP Models, and Flash Flood Decision Support System" (PI:
Cosgrove).