Water, Drought and Snowpack Monitoring in the United States Using the EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory GPS Network

使用 EarthScope Plate 边界观测站 GPS 网络对美国的水、干旱和积雪进行监测

• 批准号: 1614218
• 负责人: Adrian Borsa
• 金额: $ 52万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego Scripps Inst of Oceanography
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2019-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1614218&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Water; Drought; Snowpack; Monitoring; United

Changes in water storage in aquifers, soils, lakes and glaciers cause the Earth to deform elastically in ways that can be detected using the Global Positioning System (GPS). We propose to study this water- related deformation at GPS stations in EarthScope?s Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) and use these observations to estimate the variation of water loads over the continental United States. Given the longstanding importance of water and drought in the West, and the threat of climate change to water security across the entire USA, improvements in direct monitoring of the water cycle are of great social and economic relevance. By providing new data on water storage and the water cycle, this work has the potential to make a significant and positive impact on water management in the United States, in addition to improving the underlying science.The goal of this work is to combine GPS load estimates with mass change estimates from NASA's GRACE satellite mission and independent information about hydrological systems and their boundaries to develop improved models for water redistribution. This study puts special emphasis on the all- important snowpack estimates for the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, and drought impacts on groundwater changes in California?s Central Valley and other principal aquifers in the USA. Specifically, over the next three years, we will: 1) reprocess all daily GPS position data to generate reliable series of seasonal and nonseasonal displacements; 2) correct all time series for offsets, transient displacements, and known atmospheric/oceanic loads; 3) invert for the spatiotemporal water loading across the continental USA; 4) constrain GPS mass changes with lower-resolution data from the GRACE mission to develop better estimates of water fluxes; 5) investigate mass changes of vulnerable mountain snowpack and groundwater aquifer systems in response to the current western USA drought; and 5) publish the results of this work as a set of data products and accompanying methodology for use by scientists and for possible operational use by water managers.

含水层，土壤，湖泊和冰川中储水的变化导致地球以使用全球定位系统（GPS）检测的方式弹性变形。我们建议研究地球板边界观测站（PBO）中GPS站的这种水相关变形，并使用这些观测值估计美国大陆上水负荷的变化。鉴于西方水和干旱的长期重要性，以及整个美国的气候变化威胁对水安全的威胁，对水周期的直接监测的改善具有很大的社会和经济相关性。通过提供有关水存储和水循环的新数据，这项工作有可能对美国的水管理产生重大和积极的影响，此外，除了改善基础科学外，这项工作的目的是将GPS负载估计与NASA的Grace Satellite Missions结合估计，并从NASA的Grace Satellite Mission和对水文系统及其边界的独立信息及其开发用于改善水的模型的独立信息。这项研究特别强调了内华达山脉和落基山脉的全重要积雪估计，以及干旱对加利福尼亚州中央山谷和美国其他主要含水层的地下水变化的影响。具体来说，在接下来的三年中，我们将：1）重新处理所有日常GPS位置数据，以生成可靠的一系列季节性和非季节位移； 2）纠正偏移，瞬态位移和已知大气/海洋载荷的所有时间序列； 3）反转美国大陆的时空水载； 4）从宽限期任务中限制了GPS质量变化，以开发出对水通量的更好估计； 5）研究响应当前美国西部干旱的脆弱山积雪和地下水含水层系统的质量变化； 5）将这项工作的结果发布为一组数据产品以及随附的科学家使用以及水管理人员可能使用的运营用途。