AERIAL IMAGERY AS A METHOD FOR ESTIMATING RIVER DISCHARGE
New research, published in Water Resources Research, has found that coupling high resolution overlapping aerial imagery with hydraulic modeling can provide accurate estimates of river discharge in a time of gauging station decline and increased hydrological variability. Monitoring water resources has become very complex as preferred methods of monitoring water resources, such as gauging stations and remote sensing, are becoming too expensive to maintain and focus mostly on larger rivers of the world. Smaller river basins are not so easily measured and there is a limited understanding of the processes controlling river water quantity and quality. The author’s approach helps estimate all levels of scale in river discharge, especially in ungauged watersheds around the world. Although the authors have tested this method within an Arctic tundra watershed, it can still be applied in most alpine, desert, and ephemeral streams.
ADVANCES AND CHALLENGES IN DROUGHT PREDICTION
A recent review article in Review of Geophysics focuses on the different methods and challenges of drought prediction, and what advances have been made in improving the accuracy of forecasts. Statistical and dynamical methods are commonly used for predicting droughts, and each have their benefits and challenges. A recently-developed hybrid method, that merges the forecasts from both methods, has shown promise in improving drought prediction. Improved drought prediction requires a deep understanding of drought mechanism, refined observations from data assimilation, better models through parameterizing key components in natural and anthropogenic systems, novel methodologies to select ensembles and combine forecasts from multiple sources, and suitable uncertainty quantification through probabilistic prediction.