SWOT mission,

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SWOT mission, expectation for Tropical
hydrology Stéphane CALMANT Frédérique
SEYLER Columbus, Ohio, 15-17 Sept 2008
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Tropical basins large (transboundary) braided
rivers, changing beds with floodplains and
wetlands In practice, impossible to monitor by
usual means SWOT catch every water body
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Rivers change course with time
SWOT full coverage mapping of changes in river
course
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Low waters
High waters
SWOT inundated surfaces
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Floodplain under forest Huge volume x Low
velocity ? River discharge
2 km
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Flood plain dynamics
Bonnet, M.P, et al. Floodplain hydrology in an
Amazon floodplain lake (Lago Grande de Curuaí)
Journal of Hydrology
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Floodplain vs main stem
MS
V
Flood peak Flood fall Flood increase Low water
V Varzea MS Main Stream
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Drawbacks of conventional nadir altimetry
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ENVISAT hooking For small rivers
SWOT direct measurements
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SWOT no off-nadir ranges ?
Leakage/hooking over temporarily islets
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SWOT High resolution of river altitude profile
Caqueta River, Colombia
Profile from national chart
FARCs Guerilla
Profile by sat altimetry
VB
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SWOT will improve the time and space sampling
frequency to input in the
modelling schemes
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Drawbacks of Gauges SWOT will provide
Complementary information
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Data of in situ gauges in international
databases (exp Global Runoff Data Center)
Date de fin des mesures ?lt1980 ?1980-1984 ?1985-19
90 ?1990-1994 ?1995-2000 ?2000-2004 ?lt2004
NEED FOR A RAPIDE, UNRESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION OF
THE SWOT DATA
Number of active stations
Global Runoff Data Center
1900
2007
1980
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Which height variations? Gauge is local SWOT
cross bed slope variations
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ANA Hydrologic network optimization CNPq
UFAM Sediment transport models CNPq UnB
Floodplain processes and models ELECTRONORTE
Balbina dam CPRM Extreme events management
and prevision, underground water quality, fluvial
geodynamics Long Term AMESD (African Monitoring
of the Environment for Sustainable Development )
Congo-Oubangui-Sangha Basin management Future A
CTO - FFEM Integrated and sustainable water
management - AGIRE Madeira dams project
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SWOT will provide a full detection of the now
unmonitored- extent and level of each body in the
complex river-wetland-inundated areas systems
that are characteristic of tropical basins,
without harming the temporal sampling, contrarily
to conventional nadir altimetry.