Welcome to the informational meeting for the proposed WatER satellite mission and the NASA Surface W

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Welcome!to the informational meeting for the
proposed WatER satellite mission and the NASA
Surface Water Working Group
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Agenda1. Introductions2. Status of WatER3.
Future Directions for the SWWG4. Questions and
Discusion
We welcome everyone to join and participate
in WatER and the SWWG!
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1. Introductions
Doug Alsdorf, U.S. WaTER PI, Chair SWWG,
alsdorf.1_at_osu.edu Nelly Mognard, EU WatER PI,
nelly.mognard_at_cnes.fr Ernesto Rodriguez, JPL
Engineer of KaRIN and over 150 participants from
more than 20 countries, world wide
The WatER mission has received seed funding
from the Ohio State University, CNES, JPL, and
the Terrestrial Hydrology Program at NASA The
SWWG is funded by NASAs Terrestrial Hydrology
Program
www.legos.obs-mip.fr/recherches/missions/waterwww
.geology.ohio-state.edu/water www.geology.ohio-st
ate.edu/swwg
Have a look at the WatER poster our thanks to
WatER participant, Natalie Johnson
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1. Introductions

• What is WatER?
• WatER is a swath based radar interferometer
  designed to acquire measurements that will answer
  this question
• Where is water stored on Earths land surfaces,
  and how does this storage vary in space and
  time?

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The ability to measure, monitor, and forecast
the U.S. and global supplies of fresh water is
another high-priority concern. Agencies, through
the NSTC (National Science and Technology
Council), should develop a coordinated,
multi-year plan to improve research to understand
the processes that control water availability and
quality, and to collect and make available the
data needed to ensure an adequate water supply
for the Nation's future.
2004
http//www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/fy04/m04-2
3.pdf
The ability to measure, monitor and forecast
U.S. and global supplies of fresh water is
important because agencies are developing a
coordinated, multi-year plan through the NSTC to
improve research to understand the processes that
control water availability and quality, and to
collect and make available the data needed to
ensure an adequate water supply for the future.
Significant progress on this plan, including
stakeholder input, is expected during the next
two years.
2005
http//www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/r58.htm
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Decides that the goals of the Decade should be a
greater focus on water related issues at all
levels and on the implementation of water-related
programmes and projects, while striving to ensure
the participation and involvement of women in
water-related development efforts, and the
furtherance of cooperation at all levels, in
order to help to achieve internationally agreed
water-related goals contained in Agenda 21,1 the
Programme for the Further Implementation of
Agenda 21,2 the United Nations Millennium
Declaration5 and the Johannesburg Plan of
Implementation,3 and, as appropriate, those
identified during the twelfth and thirteenth
sessions of the Commission on Sustainable
Development
http//www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/r58.htm
Does the United States have enough water? We do
not know. What should we do? Use modern
science and technology to determine how much
water is currently available in our rivers,
lakes, reservoirs, and aquifers, how much water
is likely to be available in future decades at
current or projected rates of use and improve our
understanding of the nations water resources and
their natural variability.
615 PM This room, Thursday USGS 615 PM 3001,
Thursday NASAs M. Cleave
http//www.ostp.gov/NSTC/html/swaqreport_2-1-05.pd
f
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2. Status of WatER
www.geology.ohio-state.edu/water
www.legos.obs-mip.fr/recherches/missions/water
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2. Status of WatER

• Status of ESA Proposal
• March 2006 meeting in Venice at 15 Years
• of Progress in Radar Altimetry Symposium
• Announcement of Sub-Groups
• Science Paul Bates Pascal Kosuth, Larry Smith
• Technology Richard Bamler, Bruno Cugny, Ernesto
  Rodriguez
• Applications Dennis Lettenmaier, Stefan
  Niemeyer, Bob Su
• Charges to Sub-Groups
• Science Determine the spatial and temporal
  sampling resolutions necessary for answering
  specific science questions. Identify those
  science questions. (i.e., virtual mission).  A
  longer term and broader charge would be to
  identify those water cycle models capable of
  dealing with the enormous volumes of data that
  will come from WatER. If none are found, then
  the subgroup needs to define how to create the
  models. What are the costs involved in such
  models what are the computational requirements
  who are our colleagues in the modeling community?
  This charge extends to ensuring that WatER data
  will be used to constrain climate models, not
  just water cycle models.

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2. Status of WatER

• Charges to Sub-Groups Technology
• Determine costs for technology, launch, mission
  control and data processing. JPL and CNES each
  have their own costings for the mission and will
  be the major members of this subgroup, but with
  additional people, we increase our chances of
  avoiding mistakes. Also, an independent
  assessment of the feasibility of the technology
  is desired. We're hoping for something like a
  panel review, but done internally before the full
  200 page proposal is due at ESA and NASA. (This
  assumes that WatER will pass the first rounds of
  review.)
• Determine what is needed to establish pre- and
  post-raw data processing centers. The DLR, JPL,
  and/or CNES will probably want to have their own
  ground segments that process the raw radar echoes
  and turn them into height maps. But, WatER will
  need a center that will take these height maps
  and turn them into storage change maps and into
  discharge maps, i.e., hydrologically useful
  products. Because the mission will collect over a
  peta-byte of data, we need something far bigger
  than one PI and a couple of grad students! The
  technology subgroup needs to identify how this
  center would operate, funding sources beyond our
  space agencies (we need buy-in from other
  agencies), what the computational needs are
  (supercomputers or clusters of pc's), timeline
  for center development (it must be operational
  well before the mission is launched), and who is
  going to do the data processing.

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2. Status of WatER

• Charges to Sub-Groups Applications
• This mission needs to reach out to water
  management teams, particularly for those
  governments dealing with severe resource
  problems. Also, we need to involve the health
  community (water borne diseases, e.g., malaria).
  So, the charge to this subgroup is to identify
  the myriad of water management programs, contact
  them for their initial support, determine their
  exact needs and work out possible solutions to
  fulfilling any needs. The subgroup will need to
  educate these managers because they will only be
  used to dealing with in-situ data of a high
  temporal resolution. The charge also includes
  identifying health and disease researchers and
  find out what they need.

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2. Status of WatER
Jason-1

• Status of NASA
• Communicate our needs with program managers
• e.g., Jared Entin
• They talk with upper management
• Invitation then to present to Division
  Directorate
• Continue to talk to your congressional delegates
• WatER Submission to NRC Decadal Panel
• WatER is very compatible with submission,
  Hydrosphere Mapper
• Townhall Meeting, Marriott Tuesday 730, lower
  level ballroom next to Mike Griffins 615 talk
  on NASAs Moon Beyond
• Beyond Hydrology
• Oceanographic Applications
• Calculation of ocean water slopes and sea surface
  topography for bathymetry, ocean circulation, and
  climate. Well need to discuss tidal aliasing
  issues while keeping our hydrologic focus.
  Adding this science will require a couple extra
  ground receiving stations.
• Sea Ice Thickness
• Differences between sea ice and water surface
  allow ice-freeboard calculations, thus thickness.
  This option generally falls outside of the data
  acquisition mask, thus requires a little extra
  memory.

Sea Surface Anomalies
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2. Status of WatER
Ice DEMs

• Beyond Hydrology
• Topography of the Land
• WatER will acquire a global DEM every 8 days
  (call it a weekly DEM of the Earth). Repeated
  measurements over a 5 year mission lifetime
  permits centimeter scale elevation accuracies.
  Caveat KaRIN is a near-nadir instrument, thus
  will not provide similar accuracies over
  high-relief terrain. Floodplains will be mapped
  very well! This comes at no cost.
• Topography of the Ice
• Low relief areas of ice sheets should be easily
  mapped by KaRIN. Costs are likely minimal.
• Near Shore Ocean Surface
• KaRINs acquisition mask includes the near shore
  areas, thus allowing sea surface topography.
  This comes at no cost.

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Questions about WatER?
We are very excited about WatER and the
possibility of expanding to WATER, the Water And
Terrestrial Elevation Recovery satellite mission.
WATER would keep our surface water focus, while
welcoming the additional science goals related to
oceans, ice, and land surface elevation
measurements.
We welcome you to join and participate in WATER,
please contact Nelly Mognard or Doug Alsdorf
nelly.mognard_at_cnes.fr or
alsdorf.1_at_osu.edu
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3. Future Directions for the SWWG

• Two founding goals
• To promote research and interactions for
  determining the feasibility of measuring water
  quantity from space.
• Similarly, to identify water quality approaches.
• In a truly collaborative fashion WatER is now
  established
• Lets now turn the SWWG toward water quality
  issues.

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3. Future Directions for the SWWG

• A. Water Quality Remote Measurements of
  Transported Constituents

Erosion and deposition during the 1993
Mississippi River flooding destroyed these
agricultural fields. Knowledge of transported
sediment leads to better capability to predict
floodplain deposition.
The Meeting of the Waters. The Negro River
(top, black) meets with the Solimoes River to
form the Amazon River. Even this simple photo
from a hand-held camera demonstrates that organic
and sediment concentrations are remotely
measurable.
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3. Future Directions for the SWWG

• A. Water Quality Remote Measurements of
  Temperature

A collegial development of these water quality
approaches, under the direction of the SWWG,
would greatly promote individual efforts into the
formation of a cohesive group. Essentially, a
follow-on mission to WatER could be built upon
these water quality issues.
The quality of aquatic habitats depends, in part,
on the temperature of the water.

• B. Enhance Modeling Capabilities for Petabytes of
  Data this is a long-term project
• Future satellite missions will generate petabytes
  of data (e.g., WatER), but essentially, no model
  is yet available that can assimilate, calibrate,
  or validate such a quantity of data on surface
  water storage change and discharge (at least not
  on a weekly time-scale). Therefore, a future
  activity of the SWWG is to promote such awareness
  through working group meetings and special
  sessions at international meetings (e.g., Fall
  AGU).

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3. Future Directions for the SWWG

• C. Interactions with THPs other working groups,
  particularly field activities
• The SWWG integration would initially follow as a
  piggy-back experiment utilizing existing
  infrastructures. Still, longer term plans with
  fully developed in-situ studies are required and
  will be built from a series of SWWG meetings.
• D. Web-Based Initiatives
• We are in the process of building interactive web
  pages for contact information gathering,
  web-based dialogues, a list server, a job
  postings page, and a page for posting links and
  PDFs of published manuscripts. Ideally, these
  developments could also be used as educational
  tools.
• E. Broaden Our Membership
• Freshwater Ecology - global
• mapping threats to aquatic ecosystems such as the
  locations of dams, road crossings at streams, and
  other man-made locations where exotic species can
  be introduced
• mapping of exotic plant species in the water
  (hyacinth, bamboo)
• mapping of riparian zones, particularly gap
  locations where pollutants might be introduced to
  the ecosystem
• determining the natural hydrologic regime and
  degrees of impairment.
• Water Borne Diseases (Seasonal mappings of water
  bodies)
• CUAHSI, GEWEX, etc?

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3. Future Directions for the SWWG

• Future Meetings
• Early 2006 Sunday night to Monday (arrive
  Sunday, fly out Monday night). Chicago is an
  easy destination, but weather? Joint with AMNH
  Freshwater Ecology Group
• Joint with THPs other working groups for field
  campaign discussions
• Joint with CAtchment-scale Hydrologic Modeling
  and Data Assimilation (CAHMDA)

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Questions about the SWWG?
We welcome you to join and participate in the
SWWG! Please contact Doug Alsdorf
alsdorf.1_at_osu.edu