Publications by authors named "Luis Samaniego"

Although Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) have been widely adopted as important metrics for guiding scientific and policy decisions, the Earth Observation (EO) and Land Surface and Hydrologic Model (LSM/HM) communities have yet to treat terrestrial ECVs in an integrated manner. To develop consistent terrestrial ECVs at regional and continental scales, greater collaboration between EO and LSM/HM communities is needed. An essential first step is assessing the LSM/HM simulation uncertainty.

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Despite considerable advances in flood forecasting during recent decades, state-of-the-art, operational flood early warning systems (FEWS) need to be equipped with near-real-time inundation and impact forecasts and their associated uncertainties. High-resolution, impact-based flood forecasts provide insightful information for better-informed decisions and tailored emergency actions. Valuable information can now be provided to local authorities for risk-based decision-making by utilising high-resolution lead-time maps and potential impacts to buildings and infrastructures.

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Background & Aims: Pre-emptive transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) is the treatment of choice for high-risk acute variceal bleeding (AVB; i.e., Child-Turcotte-Pugh [CTP] B8-9+active bleeding/C10-13).

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Eddy covariance sites are ideally suited for the study of extreme events on ecosystems as they allow the exchange of trace gases and energy fluxes between ecosystems and the lower atmosphere to be directly measured on a continuous basis. However, standardized definitions of hydroclimatic extremes are needed to render studies of extreme events comparable across sites. This requires longer datasets than are available from on-site measurements in order to capture the full range of climatic variability.

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Parameter estimation is one of the most challenging tasks in large-scale distributed modeling, because of the high dimensionality of the parameter space. Relating model parameters to catchment/landscape characteristics reduces the number of parameters, enhances physical realism, and allows the transfer of hydrological model parameters in time and space. This study presents the first large-scale application of automatic parameter transfer function (TF) estimation for a complex hydrological model.

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Article Synopsis
  • Anomalies in river flood frequencies, either too many or too few floods, skew flood risk estimates and hinder effective climate adaptation efforts.
  • Observations from 1960-2010 indicate that changes in flood generation processes, rather than just extreme rainfall, significantly contribute to these anomalies across Europe.
  • A small shift in how rainfall interacts with soil (from dry to wet) has increased flood-rich periods in the Atlantic and resulted in flood-poor periods in the Mediterranean, indicating that these trends may worsen with climate change, affecting flood management strategies.
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Hydrologic model intercomparison studies help to evaluate the agility of models to simulate variables such as streamflow, evaporation, and soil moisture. This study is the third in a sequence of the Great Lakes Runoff Intercomparison Projects. The densely populated Lake Erie watershed studied here is an important international lake that has experienced recent flooding and shoreline erosion alongside excessive nutrient loads that have contributed to lake eutrophication.

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In this study, we examine the impacts of climate change on variations in the long-term mean silage maize yield using a statistical crop model at the county level in Germany. The explanatory variables, which consider sub-seasonal effects, are soil moisture anomalies for June and August and precipitation and temperature for July. Climate projections from five regional climate models (RCMs) are used to simulate soil moisture with the mesoscale Hydrologic Model and force the statistical crop model.

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Early 21st-century droughts in Europe have been broadly regarded as exceptionally severe, substantially affecting a wide range of socio-economic sectors. These extreme events were linked mainly to increases in temperature and record-breaking heatwaves that have been influencing Europe since 2000, in combination with a lack of precipitation during the summer months. Drought propagated through all respective compartments of the hydrological cycle, involving low runoff and prolonged soil moisture deficits.

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Article Synopsis
  • Sustainable water basin management needs a clear understanding of river flow patterns affected by human activity.
  • Hydrological models are used to evaluate flow in ungauged areas, but developing these models can be resource-intensive, prompting decision-makers to use existing models.
  • This study found that while flow magnitude indicators are reliable at medium to high flows, other indicators like timing and duration face significant uncertainties, impacting ecological assessments, especially in areas with no prior flow data.
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Article Synopsis
  • The paper discusses the historical controversies surrounding the various approaches to process-based hydrologic modeling, highlighting debates over parameterization, data limitations, and computational constraints.
  • It reviews key challenges in hydrologic modeling such as defining suitable model equations and parameters, as well as addressing computing power limitations.
  • The authors suggest that leveraging the diversity of modeling techniques can enhance the development of more accurate and physically realistic hydrologic models, pointing out successful advancements and identifying ongoing research needs.
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In this synthesis paper addressing hydrologic scaling and similarity, we posit that roadblocks in the search for universal laws of hydrology are hindered by our focus on computational simulation (the third paradigm), and assert that it is time for hydrology to embrace a fourth paradigm of data-intensive science. Advances in information-based hydrologic science, coupled with an explosion of hydrologic data and advances in parameter estimation and modelling, have laid the foundation for a data-driven framework for scrutinizing hydrological scaling and similarity hypotheses. We summarize important scaling and similarity concepts (hypotheses) that require testing, describe a mutual information framework for testing these hypotheses, describe boundary condition, state/flux, and parameter data requirements across scales to support testing these hypotheses, and discuss some challenges to overcome while pursuing the fourth hydrological paradigm.

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Nitrate loads and corresponding dual-isotope signatures were used to evaluate large scale N dynamics and trends in a river catchment with a strong anthropogenic gradient (forest conservation areas in mountain regions, and intensive agriculturally used lowlands). The Bode River catchment with an area of 3200 km(2) in the Harz Mountains and central German lowlands was investigated by a two years monitoring program including 133 water sampling points each representing a subcatchment. Based on discharge data either observed or simulated by the mesoscale hydrological model (mHM) a load based interpretation of hydrochemical and isotope data was conducted.

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Bayesian model selection or averaging objectively ranks a number of plausible, competing conceptual models based on Bayes' theorem. It implicitly performs an optimal trade-off between performance in fitting available data and minimum model complexity. The procedure requires determining Bayesian model evidence (BME), which is the likelihood of the observed data integrated over each model's parameter space.

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