Water storage changes from grace data in the La Plata Basin

Abstract

Aquatic environments perform important functions in nature such as the control of climate, floods and nutrients, and they provide goods and services for humanity. To monitor these environments at large spatial scales, the satellite gravity mission GRACE provides time-variable gravity field models that reflect the Earth's gravity field variations due to mass transport processes like continental water storage variations. The La Plata Basin is the second largest one in South America and it is a sample of the abundance, variety and quality of natural resources and the possibilities offered in connection with the production of goods and services. In this work the GRACE capability to monitor the water storage over La Plata Basin will be analyzed, using the solutions provided by the four different GRACE processing centers: CSR, GFZ, JPL and BGI. Afterward the calculated hydrological signal will be used to estimate four mass change models over this hydrographic system's area using a generalized inversion method on the gravity trends. Also, preliminary results from ENVISAT altimetry data are presented and compared with GRACE solutions. All the solutions detected the significant mass changes of the area, thought there are some discrepancies between the four GRACE processing centers. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.