Extreme flood events in the Bolivian Amazon wetlands

Ovando, Alex; Tomasella, Javier; Rodríguez, Daniel Andrés; Martinez, Jean‐Michel; Siqueira-Junior, J.L.; Pinto, Gustavo L.N.; Passy, Paul; Vauchel, Philippe; Noriega, Luis; Randow, Celso von

doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2015.11.004

Cited by 63 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…This was a period so wet across the equatorial and southern tropics that ocean levels dropped [ Boening et al ., ]. Subsequent years were also wetter than average: record Amazon flood levels were repeatedly observed in 2012, 2013, and again in 2014, when there was heavy precipitation in the eastern flanks of the Andes in Bolivia and Peru, with exceptional flood levels in the Amazon wetlands of Bolivia in 2007, 2008, and 2014 [ Ovando et al ., ] (see also supporting information S1, section 12 and Figure S12). The South American tropics have experienced rising temperatures and increased wet‐season precipitation post‐2000 [ Gloor et al ., , ], which would further drive increasing emissions of methane, particularly in the very hot year of 2014 [ Gedney et al ., ].…”

Section: Global Evolution Of Trends In Methane Mole Fraction and Isotmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rising atmospheric methane: 2007–2014 growth and isotopic shift

Nisbet

Dlugokencky

Manning

et al. 2016

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

392

485

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From 2007 to 2013, the globally averaged mole fraction of methane in the atmosphere increased by 5.7 ± 1.2 ppb yr À1. Simultaneously, δ 13 C CH4 (a measure of the 13 C/ 12 C isotope ratio in methane) has shifted to significantly more negative values since 2007. Growth was extreme in 2014, at 12.5 ± 0.4 ppb, with a further shift to more negative values being observed at most latitudes. The isotopic evidence presented here suggests that the methane rise was dominated by significant increases in biogenic methane emissions, particularly in the tropics, for example, from expansion of tropical wetlands in years with strongly positive rainfall anomalies or emissions from increased agricultural sources such as ruminants and rice paddies. Changes in the removal rate of methane by the OH radical have not been seen in other tracers of atmospheric chemistry and do not appear to explain short-term variations in methane. Fossil fuel emissions may also have grown, but the sustained shift to more 13 C-depleted values and its significant interannual variability, and the tropical and Southern Hemisphere loci of post-2007 growth, both indicate that fossil fuel emissions have not been the dominant factor driving the increase. A major cause of increased tropical wetland and tropical agricultural methane emissions, the likely major contributors to growth, may be their responses to meteorological change.

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Section: Global Evolution Of Trends In Methane Mole Fraction and Isotmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rising atmospheric methane: 2007–2014 growth and isotopic shift

Nisbet

Dlugokencky

Manning

et al. 2016

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

392

485

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Therefore, improved predictions of the hydrological system can aid policymakers and stakeholders in making better decisions, also fostering actions to reduce risk and impacts on water resources under current and future conditions. In South America, recent important floods (e.g., Marengo et al, 2012;Hoyos et al, 2013;Ovando et al, 2016) and droughts (Melo et al, 2016;Erfanian et al, 2017), together with uncertainties about the potential effects of climate change ) are encouraging new 10 strategies for meeting social, economic and environmental water demands in large river basins all over the continent, some of them extending beyond political borders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward continental hydrologic–hydrodynamic modeling in South America

Paiva¹,

Siqueira²,

Fleischmann³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. Providing reliable estimates of streamflow and hydrological fluxes is a major challenge for water resources management over national and transnational basins in South America. Global hydrological models and land surface models are a possible solution to simulate the terrestrial water cycle at the continental scale, but issues on parameterization and limitations in representing lowland river systems put into question their utility for basin-scale analysis and to deliver daily 15 discharges to meet local needs. In an attempt to overcome such limitations, we extended a regional, fully coupled hydrologic-hydrodynamic model (MGB) to the continental domain of South America and assessed its performance using daily river discharges, water levels from independent sources (in situ, satellite altimetry), estimates of terrestrial water storage (TWS) and evapotranspiration (ET) from remote sensing and other available global datasets. In addition, river discharges were compared with outputs from global models acquired through the eartH2Observe project (HTESSEL/CaMa-20 Flood, LISFLOOD and WaterGAP3), providing the first cross-scale assessment (regional/continental  global models) that makes use of spatially consistent daily discharge data. A satisfactory representation of discharges and water levels was obtained (NSE > 0.6 in 55 % of the cases) and MGB was able to capture patterns of seasonality and magnitude of TWS and ET especially over the largest basins of South America. Continental-scale modeling significantly improved discharge estimates when compared with global models, which resulted in a large number of gauges with negative (or close to 0) NSE 25 values. Models were largely affected by positive bias mainly over East/Northeast Brazil and Argentina as well as over regions of Sao Francisco and Parnaiba basins, while major issues on flow timing were observed in regions affected by floodplain processes such as the Amazon, La Plata, Tocantins-Araguaia, Orinoco and Magdalena basins. We state that efforts in calibrating rainfall-runoff parameters within large basins are necessary to simulate daily river discharges appropriately in this continent, but implementing a hydrodynamic routing component is also important. We hope that our 30 study provides further insights about hydrological simulation in South America, helping to reduce the gap between global and regional hydrological modeling communities.Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi

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“…The hydrological model MHD-INPE was calibrated for the historical period 1970-1990 using observed hidrometorological data (Siqueira Junior et al 2015). Model simulation has a good performance in represent the historical series of daily discharges in Porto Velho gauge station, reaching a Nash-Sutcliff performance coefficient of 0.83.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Madeira River born in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes and flows in the SW-NE direction across Brazil, where it met the Amazon. During the last years, several extreme events, with 100 years of time recurrence, impacted the basin: 2005 and 2010 droughts (Tomasella et al 2010), and floods in 2009, 2012 (Marengo et al 2013), besides the major historical flood in 2014 (Ovando et al 2015).…”

Section: Troductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of Flooded Areas Projections and Floods Potential Impacts Applying Remote Sensing Imagery and Demographic Data

Carriello

Fernandes

Lopes

et al. 2016

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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Commission VIII, WG VIII/1 KEY WORDS: Floods, Climate Change Impacts, Climate Change Vulnerability ABSTRACT:Assessing vulnerability and potential impacts associated with extreme discharges requires an accurate topographic description in order to estimate the extension of flooded areas. However, in most populated regions, topographic data obtained by in-situ measurements is not available. In this case, digital elevation models derived from remote sensing date are usually applied. Moreover, this digital elevation models have intrinsic errors that introduce bigger uncertainty in results than the associated to hydrological projections. On the other hand, estimations of flooded areas through remote sensing images provide accurate information, which could be used for the construction of river level-flooded area relationships regarding vulnerability assessment. In this work, this approach is applied for the city of Porto Velho in the Brazilian Amazonia to assess potential vulnerability to floods associated with climate change projections. The approach is validated using census data, provided by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, and information about socio-economical injuries associated to historical floods, provided by the Brazilian Civil Defence. Hydrological projections under climate change are carried out using several downscaling of climate projections as inputs in a hydrological model. Results show more accurate estimation of flood impacts than the obtained using digital elevation models derivate from remote sensing data. This reduces uncertainties in the assessment of vulnerability to floods associated with climate change in the region.

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Extreme flood events in the Bolivian Amazon wetlands

Cited by 63 publications

References 44 publications

Rising atmospheric methane: 2007–2014 growth and isotopic shift

Rising atmospheric methane: 2007–2014 growth and isotopic shift

Toward continental hydrologic–hydrodynamic modeling in South America

Assessment of Flooded Areas Projections and Floods Potential Impacts Applying Remote Sensing Imagery and Demographic Data

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