The downstreamness of comsumptive water use; The impact of drought on the spatio-temporal distribution of consumptive water use in the Banabuiú basin, Brazil

By Martin Colee (the Netherlands)

Abstract
Monitoring of (meteorological-) drought impact on a catchment level requires large amounts of in-situ measurements. Indicators such as the SPI provide limited spatial information, however, Remote Sensing techniques may provide additional information on a consistent spatio-temporal scale. In semi-arid regions such as the North-East of Brazil, drought can propagate into hydrological drought affecting up- and downstream locations in different ways. The Downstreamness concept was applied to the consumptive water use (ET) in the Banabuiú basin, in order to compute the intra-basin differences in drought onset and impact during and after the 2011 drought. To facilitate this computations, high-resolution ET timeseries were created on a High Performance Cluster (HPC) using Surface Energy Balance Models for the period of 2000-2017, and compared to standard MODIS evapotranspiration products. The high resolution ET data did not provide additional bene1ts compared to the MOD16A2 ET product. The Downstreamness of Consumptive Water Use captured the 2011 meteorological drought, and showed a persistent shift of water usage to more upstream located areas. Applying this methodology and linking it to the human-in2uenced hydrological processes on catchment level, could provide insights into how complex water availability and consumption relationships formate in heavily controlled catchments.

Keywords: Banabuiú; Remote Sensing; METRIC; Downstreamness; drought; Water Resources Management