Description

Regional water managers continuously have to make decisions on whether to increase or decrease the water level, using manageable weirs and pumps, to ensure that there is sufficient capacity in the system in case of water excess and enough water stored to supply the demand in case of shortages. A key storage parameter is the amount of water stored in the soil or soil moisture. Soil moisture data at regional scale is readily available with a high accuracy from the NASA’s SMAP satellite. Moreover, the Water Resources department operates two regional scale soil moisture monitoring networks; one in the management area of the Regional Water Authority (RWA) ‘Aa en Maas’ and one in Twente, the management area of RWA ‘Vechtstromen’.

This MSc topics is suitable for both M-GEO and M-SE students.

M-GEO students focus on exploring relationships between in-situ and satellite observations of soil moisture and groundwater level and streamflow, possibly through the application of conceptual hydrological models.

M-SE students focus less on the data analysis, but will engage in discussion with regional water managers to investigate on what information decisions are made.

Objectives and Methodology

Soil moisture data at regional scale is readily available with a high accuracy from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) satellite. The objective of this research is to investigate what the predictive value of the regional scale soil moisture is for drought and streamflow, which are two processes relevant for regional water managers. The study will primarily focus on the analysis of data collected from satellites and in-situ measurements (e.g. soil moisture, groundwater level and streamflow).

Further reading

van der Velde, R., Colliander, A., Pezij, M., Benninga, H-J. F., Bindlish, R., Chan, S. K., Jackson, T. J., Hendriks, D. M. D., Augustijn, D. C. M., & Su, Z. (2019). Validation of SMAP L2 passive-only soil moisture products using in situ measurements collected in Twente, The Netherlands. Hydrology and earth system sciences discussions. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2019-471.
Benninga, H. F., Carranza, C. D. U., Pezij, M., van Santen, P., van der Ploeg, M. J., Augustijn, D. C. M., & van der Velde, R. (2018). The Raam regional soil moisture monitoring network in the Netherlands. Earth system science data, 10(1), 61-79. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-61-2018.