South America Land Use and Land Cover Assessment and Preliminary Analysis of Their Impacts on Regional Atmospheric Modeling Studies

Abstract

Data provided by two important sources of information on land use and land cover (LULC), MODIS-2009 and GLOBCOVER-2009, were analyzed for South America in order to assess differences related to their application in numerical modeling studies. Even though on a South American basis, the two databases showed a Pearson correlation coefficient above 85%, on a regional analysis, the correlation stayed within the range of 0%-100%, depending on the territorial unit analyzed. Significant differences were observed in most of the land cover classes, with only forested areas presenting a good level of agreement. In terms of territorial units, only areas in the Amazon region, where forest cover is predominant, showed significant correlation levels. Crops and urban classes presented the greatest differences between the two analyzed files. Results of meteorological simulations indicated that such observed discrepancies are able to cause strong impacts on modeling scenarios and important bias on simulated variables, being a crucial feature for weather and climate forecast and diagnostic.

Contributions of mobile, stationary and biogenic sources to air pollution in the Amazon rainforest: a numerical study with the WRF-Chem model

“…In this context, atmospheric models with an explicit treatment of the physical and chemical processes become an indispensable tool to the studies of the urban pollution impact. Several numerical studies can be found with special focus on different aspects of the pollution impact, such as pollution episodes Michael et al, 2013;Kuik et al, 2015), regional and longdistance transport (Tie et al, 2007;Guo et al, 2009;Lin et al, 2010), secondary formation of gases and particles (Yerramile et al, 2010;Jiang et al, 2012;Lowe et al, 2015), and the effects of land use and land cover changes (Capucim et al, 2015;Rafee et al, 2015). However, such studies did not investigate the impact of isolated urban plumes.…”

Large-Scale Hydrological Modelling of the Upper Paraná River Basin

“…In particular, this watershed houses 87 hydropower plants (see Figure 1) that provide more than 41,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity [7]. The importance of modelling the hydrology of this basin as a whole is evident, but most of the studies discussing the hydrology of the basin, are local ones that focus on sub-basins and do not represent the whole basin [8,9]. Very few examples of the modelling of UPRB are found [10].…”

Mobile and stationary sources of air pollutants in the Amazon rainforest: a numerical study with WRF-Chem model

“…Several numerical studies can be found with special focus on different aspects of the pollution impact. For instance, pollution episodes (Jiang et al, 2012;Michael et al, 2013;Kuik et al, 2015), regional and long distance transportation (Tie et al, 2007;Guo et al, 2009;Lin et al, 2010), secondary formation of gases and particles (Yerramile et al, 2010;Jiang et al, 2012;Lowe et al, 2015), and the effects on land use and land cover changes (Capucim et al, 2015;Rafee et al, 2015). However, such studies are not capable 45 of investigating the impact of isolated urban plumes.…”