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Hydrological Tracking Model for Amazon Surface Waters
Author(s) -
Sorribas Mino Viana,
Paiva Rodrigo Cauduro Dias,
Fleischmann Ayan Santos,
Collischonn Walter
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/2019wr024721
Subject(s) - tributary , floodplain , hydrology (agriculture) , surface water , drainage basin , environmental science , structural basin , hydrograph , amazon rainforest , water balance , geology , geomorphology , geography , ecology , geotechnical engineering , environmental engineering , biology , cartography
This study presents an alternative model for hydrological tracking of surface waters designed to investigate multiyear storage and movement of water in large river basins. We coupled this model with a background solution from a large‐scale hydrological‐hydrodynamic model to study the fate of waters in the Amazon River basin (6 million km 2 ) considering the following: (i) the surface water travel times, (ii) the role of large floodable areas (17% of the basin), and (iii) the relations between water composition and lithological sources. Through numerical experiments, we investigated the spatial distribution of in‐stream surface water travel time for the Amazon River Basin (relative to the outlet) and the role of floodplains in seasonal water storage. We estimate that surface water travel time is likely to be less than 90 days (median of 45 days), although about 20% of the flowing water passes through large floodplains. Our modeling exercises indicate that whole‐basin monthly water net balance between river and floodplain can reach up to magnitudes of 10 5 m 3 /s; the water exchanged with floodplains during the annual floods can represent a large portion (up to 40%) of the basin discharge during low waters season. Finally, we took advantage of the tracking approach to study the hydrograph composition based on parent river lithology quantifying the role of major tributaries. Parallel to the development of global hydrology databases, new modeling approaches are also required to push advances in the discussion of renewal and travel times of surface waters in large river basins.