UNH PROF. CONTRIBUTES TO FIRST-EVER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HYDROLOGY

Article finds satellites can help predict floods, but can’t replace more expensive monitoring

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An article by a University of New Hampshire (UNH) earth science professor on using remote sensing to estimate river discharge will be included in the first ever Encyclopedia of Hydrological Sciences due to be published late next year.

Wiley Publishing, a leading publisher of scientific and technical information, asked Professor Lawrence Dingman to contribute to its definitive, research level, multi-volume encyclopedia. Dingman, with graduate student David Bjerklie, wrote a comprehensive entry on using data gathered from satellites and airplanes to estimate the amount of water flowing in a river.

With the second-oldest hydrology program in the United States and the only one in New England, it is no surprise that Wiley turned to UNH for expertise in the study of the movement of water. “UNH has a long tradition in hydrologic education,” said Dingman. “And we’ve carried forward a real pioneering effort in the area of remote sensing.” Dingman has previously written research papers and widely used textbooks on the hydraulics of river flows and on general hydrology.

The conventional method for measuring river discharge uses stream flow gauges set in the river itself, but this method is costly -- a major reason why stream flow monitoring programs are declining worldwide. Currently, less than 60 percent of the runoff from the continents is measured. The information is extremely important, not only because river discharge records are used to predict the likelihood of floods -- the most destructive natural disaster -- but also because river discharge is a reflection of how much water is available for human use – for things like drinking water, navigation, wastewater disposal, irrigation, hydroelectric power, and recreation. Ironically, stream flow monitoring is declining just as demand for water for all these purposes is growing with population. Roughly 1/3 of the world’s population currently lives under moderate to high water stress.

“Discharge measurements provide a lot of information about what is going on hydrologically and it’s a very sensitive indicator of climate change, as well -- more sensitive than precipitation changes, for example,” said Dingman. River discharge also plays a crucial role in global climate and in delivering nutrients to support the oceanic food web.

Dingman’s encyclopedia entry concludes that remote sensing estimates have the potential to greatly expand the extent of river-flow data globally. However, they are not as accurate as conventional ground-based stream flow gauges and cannot replace them. “Remote sensing cannot solve the problem of having to spend money to do stream gauging, but it can provide you with observations from a large part of the globe where we don’t have any information about river flow.”

For more information about UNH's hydrology program, visit: http://www.unh.edu/esci/index.html

PHOTO CAPTION

Rushing River: Satellite image of the Missouri River near Elk Point, South Dakota taken with Synthetic Aperture Radar showing surface-velocity distribution in meters per second. [Reproduced by permission of D. Moller, NASA- Jet Propulsion Laboratory].

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