Experiences in using the TRMM data to complement rain gauge data in the Ecuadorian coastal foothills

Abstract

Nowadays, new technologies are being used to expand the coverage of conventional meteorological datasets. An example of these is the TRMM data as long as one considers the bias, the type of rainfall and the current coarse spatial resolution. Although in the Guayas River Basin (Ecuadorian lowlands) the radar-based precipitation does not match the magnitude of the ground-based rainfall, at least it records somewhat the spatial pattern. The bias remains more or less steady when the temporal resolution increases from yearly to seasonal and monthly data. By means of an empirical disaggregation method, synthetic daily rainfall time series were generated at the satellite measuring spots. These artificial series were incorporated into an existing hydrological model to complement the available raingauge data to assess the model performance. The results were quite comparable with those using only gauge information. Although the model outcomes did not improve remarkably, the contribution of this approach was based on the fact that given a known bias, the satellite data could still be corrected and may resemble the information provided by the raingauges. Therefore, TRMM may supply valuable information in areas scarcely gauged such as the Andean foothills in the Guayas River Basin

A simple regionalization approach as an alternative to obtain rainfall data in a tropical and ungauged catchment

“…It is noted that the right part of the catchment shows low rainfall values at 00:00 hrs and 03:00 hrs and high rainfall values from 06:00 hrs to 18:00 hrs. This fact corroborates the concerns about possible high uncertainties that may be associated with rainfall estimation across the lower part of the Catchment (Paiva et al, 2011;Arias-Hidalgo 2013).…”

“…Recent studies have shown that the spatial resolution greatly affects the results of hydrologic and hydraulic models. Models using distributed rainfall data show better results than those using information from rain gauges (Guo et al, 2004;Smith et al, 2004;Arias-Hidalgo, 2013).…”

Macroinvertebrados acuáticos como indicadores de calidad hídrica en áreas de descargas residuales al río Quevedo, Ecuador

“…En este contexto, el creciente interés por conocer y proteger los ecosistemas fluviales y estudiar sus cambios en el tiempo, ha estimulado en las últimas décadas el desarrollo de criterios biológicos que permitan estimar el efecto de las intervenciones humanas en ellos (Figueroa et al, 2003). Estudios de diversidad de macroinvertebrados acuáticos y de su papel en la determinación de calidad del agua en el trópico, son numerosos; Posada-García & Roldan-Pérez (2003); Chará et al (2010); Meza-S et al (2012); Arias-Hidalgo et al (2013); Giraldo et al (2014). En Ecuador, Alvarez-Mieles et al (2013) evaluaron el estado y el manejo ecológico del Humedal Abras de Mantequilla mediante el empleo de índices bióticos y su relación con factores abióticos.…”