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Potentials and constraints of different types of soil moisture observations for flood simulations in headwater catchments

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Abstract

Flood generation in mountainous headwater catchments is governed by rainfall intensities, by the spatial distribution of rainfall and by the state of the catchment prior to the rainfall, e.g. by the spatial pattern of the soil moisture, groundwater conditions and possibly snow. The work presented here explores the limits and potentials of measuring soil moisture with different methods and in different scales and their potential use for flood simulation. These measurements were obtained in 2007 and 2008 within a comprehensive multi-scale experiment in the Weisseritz headwater catchment in the Ore-Mountains, Germany. The following technologies have been applied jointly thermogravimetric method, frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) sensors, spatial time domain reflectometry (STDR) cluster, ground-penetrating radar (GPR), airborne polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (polarimetric SAR) and advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) based on the satellite Envisat. We present exemplary soil measurement results, with spatial scales ranging from point scale, via hillslope and field scale, to the catchment scale. Only the spatial TDR cluster was able to record continuous data. The other methods are limited to the date of over-flights (airplane and satellite) or measurement campaigns on the ground. For possible use in flood simulation, the observation of soil moisture at multiple scales has to be combined with suitable hydrological modelling, using the hydrological model WaSiM-ETH. Therefore, several simulation experiments have been conducted in order to test both the usability of the recorded soil moisture data and the suitability of a distributed hydrological model to make use of this information. The measurement results show that airborne-based and satellite-based systems in particular provide information on the near-surface spatial distribution. However, there are still a variety of limitations, such as the need for parallel ground measurements (Envisat ASAR), uncertainties in polarimetric decomposition techniques (polarimetric SAR), very limited information from remote sensing methods about vegetated surfaces and the non-availability of continuous measurements. The model experiments showed the importance of soil moisture as an initial condition for physically based flood modelling. However, the observed moisture data reflect the surface or near-surface soil moisture only. Hence, only saturated overland flow might be related to these data. Other flood generation processes influenced by catchment wetness in the subsurface such as subsurface storm flow or quick groundwater drainage cannot be assessed by these data. One has to acknowledge that, in spite of innovative measuring techniques on all spatial scales, soil moisture data for entire vegetated catchments are still today not operationally available. Therefore, observations of soil moisture should primarily be used to improve the quality of continuous, distributed hydrological catchment models that simulate the spatial distribution of moisture internally. Thus, when and where soil moisture data are available, they should be compared with their simulated equivalents in order to improve the parameter estimates and possibly the structure of the hydrological model.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been conducted as part of the project OPAQUE (operational discharge and flooding predictions in head catchments), a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the research programme RIMAX (‘Risk Management of Extreme Flood Events’). This financial support is gratefully acknowledged, as well as the further funding of measurement equipment and technical support from the University of Potsdam and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. We thank Thomas Recknagel for conducting the WASIM-ETH simulations. Furthermore, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their clear and constructive comments to an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476, Potsdam, Germany

    Axel Bronstert, Thomas Graeff, Maik Heistermann, David Kneis & Erika Lück

  2. GFZ German Research Centre for Geoscience, Section 5.4: Hydrology, Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Benjamin Creutzfeldt

  3. ETH Zurich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, Schafmattstr. 6, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland & German Aerospace Center, Microwaves and Radar Institute, P.O. Box 1116, 82234, Wessling, Germany

    Irena Hajnsek

  4. GFZ German Research Centre for Geoscience, 1.4: Remote Sensing, Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Sibylle Itzerott

  5. German Aerospace Centre, Microwaves and Radar Institute, P.O. Box 1116, 82234, Wessling, Germany

    Thomas Jagdhuber

  6. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, P.O. Box 601203, 14412, Potsdam, Germany

    Dominik Reusser

  7. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT, Institute of Water Resources and River Basin Management, Kaiserstrasse 12, 76129, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Erwin Zehe

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  1. Axel Bronstert
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Bronstert, A., Creutzfeldt, B., Graeff, T. et al. Potentials and constraints of different types of soil moisture observations for flood simulations in headwater catchments. Nat Hazards 60, 879–914 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9874-9

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