Relative contribution of high-resolution Sentinel-1 data assimilation and modeling choices to improve regional water budget estimates

Land surface models provide self-consistent estimates of the water stored in various components of the land system, i.e. in the soil, vegetation and snow, and of water fluxes. Assimilation of satellite-based data helps to update these estimates to some extent, but it has some limitations when human processes, such as irrigation, are missing in the modeling system. Furthermore, the simulated water distribution heavily depends on the choice of meteorological input and other model choices. In this study, we aim to quantify the relative contribution of (i) Sentinel-1 data assimilation for soil moisture and snow updating, (ii) meteorological input, and (iii) modeling irrigation over the Po river basin in Italy.

The Po river network channels the discharge of snow melt water from the Alps and Apennines, combined with surface and deep subsurface runoff from the hillslopes and valley. During the summer, the river network supplies irrigation water to the large agricultural area in the Po river valley. The Po basin is thus a unique testbed to study various water budget components in an environment with pronounced seasonal water storage dynamics and human water management.

More specifically, we assimilate 1-km Sentinel-1 data into the Noah-MP land surface model coupled to an irrigation module and the hydrological modeling and analysis platform (HyMAP) as runoff routing module. The Noah-MP simulations are forced with meteorological data from either the fifth generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5) or the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) for the years 2015-2023. Sentinel-1 snow depth retrievals are assimilated over the mountains in the winter, whereas Sentinel-1 backscatter are mainly assimilated in the valley during the spring, summer and fall. The state updates are applied to snow depth, snow water equivalent, and soil moisture. These updates subsequently trigger updates in estimates of irrigation, leaf area index, discharge and other variables, resulting in a self-consistent re-analysis of the entire water budget of the Po basin. The impact of the Sentinel-1 data assimilation relative to that of the activation of irrigation modeling is quantified using independent in situ and remotely sensed measurements of soil moisture, leaf area index, snow depth, evaporation, irrigation and discharge.