This project explored the integrated use of satellite, ground observations and hydrological distributed models to support water resources assessment and monitoring in High Mountain Asia (HMA). Hydrological data products were generated taking advantage of the synergies of European and Chinese data assets and space-borne observation systems. Energy-budget-based glacier mass balance and hydrological models driven by satellite observations were developed. These models can be applied to describe glacier-melt contribution to river flow. Satellite hydrological data products were used for forcing, calibration, validation and data assimilation in distributed river basin models. A pilot study was carried out on the Red River basin. Multiple hydrological data products were generated using the data collected by Chinese satellites. A new Evapo-Transpiration (ET) dataset from 2000 to 2018 was generated, including plant transpiration, soil evaporation, rainfall interception loss, snow/ice sublimation and open water evaporation. Higher resolution data were used to characterize glaciers and their response to environmental forcing. These studies focused on the Parlung Zangbo Basin, where glacier facies were mapped with GaoFeng (GF), Sentinal-2/Multi-Spectral Imager (S2/MSI) and Landsat8/Operational Land Imager (L8/OLI) data. The geodetic mass balance was estimated between 2000 and 2017 with Zi-Yuan (ZY)-3 Stereo Images and the SRTM DEM. Surface velocity was studied with Landsat5/Thematic Mapper (L5/TM), L8/OLI and S2/MSI data over the period 2013–2019. An updated method was developed to improve the retrieval of glacier albedo by correcting glacier reflectance for anisotropy, and a new dataset on glacier albedo was generated for the period 2001–2020. A detailed glacier energy and mass balance model was developed with the support of field experiments at the Parlung No. 4 Glacier and the 24 K Glacier, both in the Tibetan Plateau. Besides meteorological measurements, the field experiments included glaciological and hydrological measurements. The energy balance model was formulated in terms of enthalpy for easier treatment of water phase transitions. The model was applied to assess the spatial variability in glacier melt. In the Parlung No. 4 Glacier, the accumulated glacier melt was between 1.5 and 2.5 m w.e. in the accumulation zone and between 4.5 and 6.0 m w.e. in the ablation zone, reaching 6.5 m w.e. at the terminus. The seasonality in the glacier mass balance was observed by combining intensive field campaigns with continuous automatic observations. The linkage of the glacier and snowpack mass balance with water resources in a river basin was analyzed in the Chiese (Italy) and Heihe (China) basins by developing and applying integrated hydrological models using satellite retrievals in multiple ways. The model FEST-WEB was calibrated using retrievals of Land Surface Temperature (LST) to map soil hydrological properties. A watershed model was developed by coupling ecohydrological and socioeconomic systems. Integrated modeling is supported by an updated and parallelized data assimilation system. The latter exploits retrievals of brightness temperature (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer, AMSR), LST (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS), precipitation (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and FengYun (FY)-2D) and in-situ measurements. In the case study on the Red River Basin, a new algorithm has been applied to disaggregate the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) soil moisture retrievals by making use of the correlation between evaporative fraction and soil moisture.

Mountain glaciers are excellent indicators of climate change and have an important role in the terrestrial water cycle and food security in many parts of the world. Glaciers are the major water source of rivers and lakes in the Nyainqentanglha Mountains (NM) region, where the glacier area has the second largest extent on the Tibetan Plateau. The potential of the high spatial resolution ZiYuan-3 (ZY-3) Three-Line-Array (TLA) stereo images to retrieve glacier mass balance has not been sufficiently explored. In this study, we optimized the procedure to extract a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from ZY-3 TLA stereo images and estimated the geodetic mass balance of representative glaciers in the two typical areas of the NM using ZY-3 DEMs and the C-band Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) DEM in three periods, i.e., 2000-2013, 2013-2017 and 2000-2017. The results provide detailed information towards better understanding of glacier change and specifically show that: (1) with our new stereo procedure, ZY-3 TLA data can significantly increase point cloud density and decrease invalid data on the glacier surface map to generate a high resolution (5 m) glacier mass balance map; (2) the glacier mass balance in both the Western Nyainqentanglha Mountains (WNM) and Eastern Nyainqentanglha Mountains (ENM) was negative in 2000-2017, and experienced faster mass loss in recent years (2013-2017) in the WNM. Overall, the glaciers in the western and eastern NM show different change patterns since they are influenced by different climate regimes; the glacier mass balances in WNM was-0.22 ± 0.23 m w.e. a^-1 and-0.43 ± 0.06 m w.e. a^-1 in 2000-2013 and 2013-2017, respectively, while in 2000-2017, it was-0.30 ± 0.19 m w.e. a^-1 in the WNM and-0.56 ± 0.20 m w.e. a^-1 in the ENM; (3) in the WNM, the glaciers experienced mass loss in 2000-2013 and 2013-2017 in the ablation zone, while in the accumulation zone mass increased in 2000-2013 and a large mass loss occurred in 2013-2017; as regards the ENM, the glacier mass balance was negative in 2000-2017 in both zones; (4) glacier mass balance can be affected by the fractional abundance of debris and glacier slope; (5) the glacier mass balances retrieved by ZY-3 and TanDEM-X data agreed well in the ablation zone, while a large difference occurred in the accumulation zone because of the snow/firn penetration of the X-band SAR signal.

Chloroacetamides (CAMs) as a class of highly toxic nitrogenous disinfection by-products (N-DBPs) have been widely detected in drinking water. It has been reported that weak magnetic field (WMF) could improve the removal ability of zero-valent iron (ZVI) to some pollutants, but CAMs removal by ZVI coupled with WMF has never been studied. This study through oxic batch experiments was executed to investigate the effect of WMF on trichloroacetamide (TCAM) removal by different doses of ZVI under different pH levels and to explore how WMF works on TCAM removal for the first time. The results showed that the WMF improved TCAM removal by ZVI and the strengthening effect of WMF was more significant at lower ZVI dose or higher pH conditions. The formation of trichloroacetic acid indicated the occurrence of TCAM hydrolysis. Chlorine mass balance was observed in TCAM and its potential products, dichloroacetamide, monochloroacetamide, and chloride, indicating these were all the products and a dechlorination process occurred when TCAM contacted with ZVI. By calculating the yields of hydrolytic products and dechlorinated products, it was determined that dechlorination of TCAM was the dominant reaction for TCAM removal by ZVI with and without WMF, while hydrolysis reaction played a minor role. Mechanism analysis showed that the WMF promoted TCAM hydrolysis through impacting the electromigration within the oxide scale and improving the migration of paramagnetic oxygen to the surface of magnetized ZVI. Taken together, ZVI coupled with WMF is a potential effective technology for TCAM removal in effluent of chlorination.