Remote sensing based soil moisture verified by field measurements to constrain recharge in numerical groundwater models
PhD project
| Graduate student | Guido Baroncini Turricchia |
| Promotors | Prof. J. M. Fernandez |
| Co-promotors | Dr. M.W. Lubczynski |
| Partner | |
| Timeline | June 2008 - June 2012 |
| Sources of funding | co-funding ITC & University of Salamanca |
The relentless human population growth that characterizes our century is reflected in a rising demand for water for human and agricultural consumption. Ground water is particularly tempting because of high quality and easy accessibility. Unfortunately this resource is far from infinite. Because of this scarcity, especially in arid and semi-arid environments, an improvement of the efficiency of management is needed to fulfil the increasing pressures of demand.
My PhD research, within collaboration between the Universidad de Salamanca and ITC, aims to estimate the groundwater recharge in the selected study area. I will use the soil moisture information of the first centimeters retrieved by passive and active microwave satellite sensors (ASAR and SMOS) jointed with pluviometric data to obtain information on the recharge of the superficial aquifer. The study area is a catchment of 73 km2 situated 30km north of Salamanca (Spain). The area is equipped with a full weather stations and a number of soil moisture profile stations spatially distributed. During last months I have been installing many piezometers in order to study the behaviour of the water-table and for calibration and validation of the hydrological model.
In collaboration with the Universidad politècnica de Madrid we are organizing field campaigns with MRS (Magnetic Resonance Sounding) technique to retrieve hydro-geologic parameters with this non-invasive methodology. This information will be used to constrain in a better way the hydrogeological model.
In collaboration with the Univerisdad Politècnica de Catalunya we are carrying out since November 2008 a continuous monitoring of 3 different plots (cereal, bare soil and grass) both with the LAURA radiometer (L-band) and soil moisture Hydraprobes. This one allows a better understanding of the satellite data, which operates in the same L-band, with relation to vegetation and roughness, two important parameters that can affect the soil moisture retrieval in the microwave length.
