Remote river rating in resource constricted river basins: Exploring opportunities for ungauged basins through low-cost technological advancements

The unavailability of consistent accurate river flow data is a significant impediment to understanding water resources availability, and hydrological extremes. This is particularly true for remote, difficult to access, morphologically active and therefore rapidly changing rivers. The state of global river discharge monitoring with respect to...

Evaporation of the miombo woodland of southern Africa: A phenophase-based comparison of field observations to satellite-based evaporation estimates

Through precipitation retention and evaporation (by both interception and transpiration), woodlands play a significant role in the global moisture cycle. Evaporation is the largest, but at the same time, the most difficult flux to observe in a woodland. Accounting for woodland evaporation is important for hydrological modelling for the efficient...

Heat Exchange in a Conifer Canopy: A Deep Look using Fiber Optic Sensors

Forests cover a large part of the globe, and are responsible for a large amount of evaporation and the fixation of carbon. To be able to better understand this atmospheric exchange of forests, and how the forests will behave under future climate change, both accurate measurements as well as models are required. However, due to their height and...

Internal processes in hydrological models: A glance at the Meuse basin from space

Contemplating the Meuse or any other river of the world, one may wonder about the journey of rain in becoming river. This fascinates hydrologists, as they develop theories to understand movement, storage and release of water through the landscape across climates. These theories are translated to hydrological models, which describe the complex...

Satellite data in rainfall-runoff models: Exploring new opportunities for semi-arid, data-scarce river basins

Throughout the world, many people have been affected by water related issues in the past, some more extreme than others. In this context, hydrological models have often been used to gain more insight into the situation and to limit negative impacts as much as possible. There are many different types of hydrological models with each their...

Evaporation partitioning of forest stands: The role of forest structure

Forest evaporation (Ei) is considered the main source of water vapor at a continental scale. Its quantification has been carried out in many ecosystems worldwide, applying the classical partitioning method to differentiate among sources of water vapor. This partitioning differentiates between transpiration (Et), soil evaporation (Es), water...

A theoretical basis for salinity intrusion in estuaries

Saltwater intrusion is a crucial issue in estuaries. The spread of salinity is described by the dispersion coefficient. A purely empirical equation which links the effective tidal average dispersion to the freshwater discharge was developed by Van der Burgh [1972]. Combining it with the salt balance equation, Savenije [1986] derived a one...

Selecting model formulations and parameterizations: Reducing the need for calibration using open data and landscape characteristics

The need for calibration of conceptual hydrological models on river discharge is still large, and the scope of this research is to reduce this need based on new parameter estimation techniques, additional information sources and hydrological understanding. In a first step, a regularized model and an adjusted regularized model with sub-grid...

Root for rain: Towards understanding land-use change impacts on the water cycle

We live today on a human-dominated planet under unprecedented pressure on both land and water. The water cycle is intrinsically linked to vegetation and land use, and anticipating the consequences of simultaneous changes in land and water systems requires a thorough understanding of their interactions. This thesis aims to advance our knowledge...

Added value of distribution in rainfall-runoff models for the Meuse basin

Why do equal precipitation events not lead to equal discharge events across space and time? The easy answer would be because catchments are different, which then leads to the second question: Why do hydrologists often use the same rainfall-runoff model for different catchments? Probably because specifying and distributing hydrological processes...