Vini awarded a NASA FINESST grant

Mollie D. Gaines
Last updated on Oct 19, 2022 3 min read

Vini work on monitoring on-farm reservoirs with satellite data was one of 58 proposals selected for funding out of 351 proposals submitted in the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Scientific Mission Directorate.

Vini’s proposal is “Quantifying On-Farm Reservoirs' Impacts on Surface Hydrology Using a Multi-Sensor Approach”.

He described it here:

Fresh water stored by on-farm reservoirs (OFRs) is a fundamental component of surface hydrology and is critical for meeting global irrigation needs. Farmers use OFRs to store water during the wet season for crop irrigation during the dry season. There are more than 2.6 million OFRs in the US alone, and many of these OFRs were constructed during the last 40 years. Despite their importance for irrigating crops, OFRs can contribute to downstream water stress by decreasing stream discharge and peak flow in the watersheds where they are built, thereby exacerbating water stress intensified by climate change and population growth. However, modeling the impact of OFRs on surface hydrology remains a challenge because they are so abundant and have frequent fluctuations in surface area and water volume. Prior to the recent availability of satellite data, widespread monitoring of OFRs surface area and water volume across space and time was impossible due to temporal latency of satellite observations. The goal of this project, therefore, is to harness a multi-sensor satellite imagery approach to reduce observation latency and improve surface hydrology modeling, with the aim of supporting more efficient management of OFRs and mitigation of their downstream impacts. Our objectives are:
  1. Develop a multi-sensor imagery approach to reduce latency and obtain sub-weekly OFRs surface area and volume change; and
  2. Input sub-weekly OFRs volume change into the Soil Water and Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to estimate OFRs impact on surface hydrology.

Specifically for Objective 1, a novel method based on the Kalman filter will be used to harmonize data from multiple optical sensors and to provide sub-weekly OFRs surface area change, which will be converted to volume change using area-elevation equations. Then for Objective 2, we will carry out hydrological simulations in SWAT to quantify OFRs impact on simulated daily and monthly stream discharge, simulating stream discharge with and without the OFRs. We will perform yearly simulations, based on satellite imagery availability, to measure OFRs impact during low and peak flows in each watershed of our study region, which will account for both intra- as well as inter-annual variability in flows. This project will monitor OFRs surface area and volume change to enable better assessment and management of water quantity, and further the use of Earth system science to inform decisions and provide benefits to society regarding preservation of surface water resources, both of which are overarching science goals that guide NASA’s Earth Science Division program.

The Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) competition funds accepted graduate, student-designed proposals for up to 3 years.

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Mollie D. Gaines
Mollie D. Gaines
Postdoctoral Research Scholar

I am a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University.