A systematic assessment of flooding potential in a semi-arid watershed using GRACE gravity estimates and large-scale hydrological modeling

Abstract

The emergence of the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) paved the way for remote tracking of hydrological water cycle components at large scales. With the main motivation of evaluating the feasibility of the coarse resolution GRACE data for small-scale analysis, the GRACE data and large-scale hydrological models were utilized in an integrated manner to monitor the variations of the flood potential index (FPI) over the Western Anatolian Basin (WAB). The results show an ascending trend for monthly and annual FPI over the WAB. The results also suggest that the monthly FPI in 2015, 2003, 2009, and 2016 was the highest, from which the highest potentiality of flood appertains to 2015/07 with an FPI of 0.92. The lowest and highest annual FPI is 0.26 (in 2007) and 0.76 (in 2015), respectively. The validation of the results indicates that variations of FPI coincide with that of the flood incidents, stream discharge, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and the simulated flood risk. The findings accentuate the high feasibility of the GRACE JPL Mascons for better surveillance of floods over local scale areas. Highlights The coarse resolution GRACE JPL mascon functions very well in tracing the spatio-temporal characteristics of flood incidents over local scales. There is an ascending trend in the variations of flood potential over the Western Anatolia Basin (WAB). The WAB has experienced its lowest and highest possibility of flooding in 2007 and 2015 with an average FPI of 0.26 and 0.76, respectively. The variations of the flood potential index (FPI) coincides with that of the reported flood incidents, stream discharge, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and the simulated flood risk.