- 1Stockholm University, Department of Physical Geography, Baltic Sea Centre, Stockholm, Sweden (fernando.jaramillo@natgeo.su.se)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
Increasing climatic and human pressures are changing the world’s water resources and hydrological processes at unprecedented rates. Understanding these changes requires comprehensive monitoring of water resources. Hydrogeodesy, the science that measures the Earth’s solid and aquatic surfaces, gravity field, and their changes over time, delivers a range of novel monitoring tools complementary to traditional hydrological methods. It encompasses geodetic technologies such as Altimetry, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), Gravimetry, and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Beyond quantifying these changes, there is a need to understand how hydrogeodesy can contribute to more ambitious goals dealing with water-related and sustainability sciences. Addressing this need, we combine a meta-analysis of over 3,000 articles to chart the range, trends, and applications of hydrogeodesy with an expert elicitation that systematically assesses the potential to do so. We find a growing body of literature relating to the advancements in hydrogeodetic methods, their accuracy and precision, and their inclusion in hydrological modeling. While some water resources, such as lakes and glaciers, are commonly monitored by these technologies, wetlands or permafrost could benefit from a wider range of applications. The expert elicitation envisages the large potential to help solve the 23 Unsolved Questions of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences and advancing knowledge as guidance towards a safe operating space for humanity. It also highlights how this potential can be maximized by combining several hydrogeodetic technologies, exploiting artificial intelligence, and accurately integrating other Earth science disciplines. We call for a coordinated way forward to broaden the use of hydrogeodesy and exploit its full potential.
Fernando Jaramillo 1, Saeid Aminjafari 1, Pascal Castellazzi 2, Ayan Fleischmann 3, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard 4, Hossein Hashemi 5, Clara Hubinger 1, Hilary R. Martens 6, Fabrice Papa 7,8, Tilo Schöne 9, Angelica Tarpanelli 10, Vili Virkki 11, Lan Wang-Erlandsson 12,13,14, Rodrigo Abarca del Rio 15, Adrian Borsa 16, Georgia Destouni 1,17, Giuliano Di Baldassarre 18, Michele-Lee Moore12,19, José Andrés Posada-Marín20, Shimon Wdowinski21, Susanna Werth22, George Allen22, Donald Argus 23, Omid Elmi 24, Luciana Fenoglio 25, Frédéric Frappart 26, Xander Huggins 27, Zahra Kalantari 17, Simon Munier 28, Sebastián Palomino-Ángel 21, Abigail Robinson 1, Kristian Rubiano 29, Gabriela Siles 30, Marc Simard 31, Chunqiao Song 32,33, Christopher Spence 34, Mohammad J. Tourian 24, Yoshihide Wada 35, Chao Wang 36, Jida Wang 37, Fangfang Yao 38, W.R. Berghuijs 39, Jean-François Cretaux 7, Jay Famiglietti 40, Alice Fassoni-Andrade 7, Jessica V. Fayne 41, Félix Girard 42, Matti Kummu 10, Kristine M. Larson 43, Martin Maranon 1, Daniel M. Moreira 42,44, Karina Nielsen 45, Tamlin Pavelsky 36, Francisco Pena 1, J.T. Reager 23, Maria Cristina Rulli 46, Juan F. Salazar 47 1 Department of Physical Geography/ Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Sweden 2 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Environment, Waite Road - Entrance 4, Urrbrae SA 5064, Australia 3 Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, Tefé, Amazonas, Brazil 4 Earth Systems Science Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, United States 5 Department of Water Resources Engineering, Lund University, Sweden 6 Department of Geosciences, The University of Montana, United States 7 Université de Toulouse, LEGOS (CNES/CNRS/IRD/UT3), Toulouse, France 8 Institute of Geosciences, University of Brasília, Brazil 9 Department Geodesy, GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Germany 10 Research Institute for the Geo-hydrological Protection, National Research Council, Italy 11 Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, Finland 12 Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden 13 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany 14 Anthropocene Laboratory, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden 15 Departamento de Geofisica, Universidad de Concepción, Chile 16 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, United States 17 Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden 18 Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden 19 Dept of Geography and Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, Australia 20 Grupo de Investigación INDEES, IU Digital de Antioquia, Colombia 21 Institute of Environment, Department of Earth and Environment, Florida International University, United States 22 Department of Geosciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States 23 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States 24 Institute of Geodesy, University of Stuttgart, Germany 25 Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation, University of Bonn, Germany 26 ISPA, Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (INRAE), France 27 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, Canada 28 Météo-France, Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques, France 29 Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Universidad del Rosario, Colombia 30 Département des sciences géomatiques, Université Laval, Canada 31 Radar Science and Engineering Section, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States 32 Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China 33 China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing (UCASNJ), Nanjing, 211135, China 34 Environment and Climate Change Canada, Water Science and Technology Directorate, Canada 35 Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia 36 Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States 37 Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, United States 38 Environmental Institute, University of Virginia, United States 39 Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands 40 School of Sustainability Faculty, Arizona State University, United States 41 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States 42 Géosciences Environnement Toulouse, Université de Toulouse, France 43 DETECT, Universität Bonn, Germany 44 SGB -Geological Survey of Brazil, Brazil 45 Department of Space Research and Technology, Geodesy and Earth Observation, Denmark 46 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy 47 GIGA, Escuela Ambiental, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia
How to cite: Jaramillo, F. and the Hydrogeodesy group: Hydrogeodesy can address key hydrological questions and water resources sustainability, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-2871, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-2871, 2025.
