Investigating the Impact of Irrigation on Malaria Vector Larval Habitats and Transmission Using a Hydrology-Based Model.

A combination of accelerated population growth and severe droughts has created pressure on food security and driven the development of irrigation schemes across sub-Saharan Africa. Irrigation has been associated with increased malaria risk, but risk prediction remains difficult due to the heterogeneity of irrigation and the environment. While investigating transmission dynamics is helpful, malaria models cannot be applied directly in irrigated regions as they typically rely only on rainfall as a source of water to quantify larval habitats. By coupling a hydrologic model with an agent-based malaria model for a sugarcane plantation site in Arjo, Ethiopia, we demonstrated how incorporating hydrologic processes to estimate larval habitats can affect malaria transmission. Using the coupled model, we then examined the impact of an existing irrigation scheme on malaria transmission dynamics. The inclusion of hydrologic processes increased the variability of larval habitat area by around two-fold and resulted in reduction in malaria transmission by 60%. In addition, irrigation increased all habitat types in the dry season by up to 7.4 times. It converted temporary and semi-permanent habitats to permanent habitats during the rainy season, which grew by about 24%. Consequently, malaria transmission was sustained all-year round and intensified during the main transmission season, with the peak shifted forward by around 1 month. Lastly, we evaluated the spatiotemporal distribution of adult vectors under the effect of irrigation by resolving habitat heterogeneity. These findings could help larval source management by identifying transmission hotspots and prioritizing resources for malaria elimination planning.

Topographic hydro-conditioning to resolve surface depression storage and ponding in a fully distributed hydrologic model.

Land surface depressions play a central role in the transformation of rainfall to ponding, infiltration and runoff, yet digital elevation models (DEMs) used by spatially distributed hydrologic models that resolve land surface processes rarely capture land surface depressions at spatial scales relevant to this transformation. Methods to generate DEMs through processing of remote sensing data, such as optical and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) have favored surfaces without depressions to avoid adverse slopes that are problematic for many hydrologic routing methods. Here we present a new topographic conditioning workflow, Depression-Preserved DEM Processing (D2P) algorithm, which is designed to preserve physically meaningful surface depressions for depression-integrated and efficient hydrologic modeling. D2P includes several features: (1) an adaptive screening interval for delineation of depressions, (2) the ability to filter out anthropogenic land surface features (e.g., bridges), (3) the ability to blend river smoothing (e.g., a general downslope profile) and depression resolving functionality. From a case study in the Goodwin Creek Experimental Watershed, D2P successfully resolved 86% of the ponds at a DEM resolution of 10 m. Topographic conditioning was achieved with minimum impact as D2P reduced the number of modified cells from the original DEM by 51% compared to a conventional algorithm. Furthermore, hydrologic simulation using a D2P processed DEM resulted in a more robust characterization on surface water dynamics based on higher surface water storage as well as an attenuated and delayed peak streamflow.

Enhancing Malaria Research, Surveillance, and Control in Endemic Areas of Kenya and Ethiopia.

Malaria control programs in Africa encounter daunting challenges that hinder progressive steps toward elimination of the disease. These challenges include widespread insecticide resistance in mosquito vectors, increasing outdoor malaria transmission, lack of vector surveillance and control tools suitable for outdoor biting vectors, weakness in malaria surveillance, and an inadequate number of skilled healthcare personnel. Ecological and epidemiological changes induced by environmental modifications resulting from water resource development projects pose additional barriers to malaria control. Cognizant of these challenges, our International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research (ICEMR) works in close collaboration with relevant government ministries and agencies to align its research efforts with the objectives and strategies of the national malaria control and elimination programs for the benefit of local communities. Our overall goal is to assess the impact of water resource development projects, shifting agricultural practices, and vector interventions on Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax malaria in Kenya and Ethiopia. From 2017 to date, the ICEMR has advanced knowledge of malaria epidemiology, transmission, immunology, and pathogenesis, and developed tools to enhance vector surveillance and control, improved clinical malaria surveillance and diagnostic methods, and strengthened the capacity of local healthcare providers. Research findings from the ICEMR will inform health policy and strategic planning by ministries of health in their quest to sustain malaria control and achieve elimination goals.

Impact of Environmental Modifications on the Ecology, Epidemiology, and Pathogenesis of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax Malaria in East Africa.

Food insecurity, recurrent famine, and poverty threaten the health of millions of African residents. Construction of dams and rural irrigation schemes is key to solving these problems. The sub-Saharan Africa International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research addresses major knowledge gaps and challenges in Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria control and elimination in malaria-endemic areas of Kenya and Ethiopia where major investments in water resource development are taking place. This article highlights progress of the International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research in malaria vector ecology and behavior, epidemiology, and pathogenesis since its inception in 2017. Studies conducted in four field sites in Kenya and Ethiopia show that dams and irrigation increased the abundance, stability, and productivity of larval habitats, resulting in increased malaria transmission and a greater disease burden. These field studies, together with hydrological and malaria transmission modeling, enhance the ability to predict the impact of water resource development projects on vector larval ecology and malaria risks, thereby facilitating the development of optimal water and environmental management practices in the context of malaria control efforts. Intersectoral collaborations and community engagement are crucial to develop and implement cost-effective malaria control strategies that meet food security needs while controlling malaria burden in local communities.

Unveiling four decades of intensifying precipitation from tropical cyclones using satellite measurements.

Increases in precipitation rates and volumes from tropical cyclones (TCs) caused by anthropogenic warming are predicted by climate modeling studies and have been identified in several high intensity storms occurring over the last half decade. However, it has been difficult to detect historical trends in TC precipitation at time scales long enough to overcome natural climate variability because of limitations in existing precipitation observations. We introduce an experimental global high-resolution climate data record of precipitation produced using infrared satellite imagery and corrected at the monthly scale by a gauge-derived product that shows generally good performance during two hurricane case studies but estimates higher mean precipitation rates in the tropics than the evaluation datasets. General increases in mean and extreme rainfall rates during the study period of 1980-2019 are identified, culminating in a 12-18%/40-year increase in global rainfall rates. Overall, all basins have experienced intensification in precipitation rates. Increases in rainfall rates have boosted the mean precipitation volume of global TCs by 7-15%/year, with the starkest rises seen in the North Atlantic, South Indian, and South Pacific basins (maximum 59-64% over 40 years). In terms of inland rainfall totals, year-by-year trends are generally positive due to increasing TC frequency, slower decay over land, and more intense rainfall, with an alarming increase of 81-85% seen from the strongest global TCs. As the global trend in precipitation rates follows expectations from warming sea surface temperatures (11.1%/°C), we hypothesize that the observed trends could be a result of anthropogenic warming creating greater concentrations of water vapor in the atmosphere, though retrospective studies of TC dynamics over the period are needed to confirm.

The spatiotemporal variations and propagation of droughts in Plateau Mountains of China.

Drought incidents and the pressure on water resources have increased in recent years, which has threatened sustainable development. Recently, research has been conducted on drought propagation. However, few studies have investigated the characteristics and mechanisms of drought propagation in plateau mountainous regions with complex topography, which limits the efforts to mitigate drought. We used the Longchuan River Basin (LRB) in Southwest China as a case study to analyze the spatiotemporal variations of meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural droughts and the process of drought propagation in plateau mountainous regions. Our results demonstrated that: (1) the variation in the intensity, frequency, and coverage of droughts indicated that meteorological droughts and hydrological droughts were increasingly serious, while agricultural droughts were eased from 2000 to 2015; (2) the propagation time between different types of droughts was approximately 2 months; and (3) the propagation sequences of droughts varied by altitude; in particular, agricultural droughts propagated to hydrological droughts at higher altitudes, and the opposite occurred at lower altitudes. We concluded that elevation plays a critical role in the time-space differentiation of drought propagation in plateau mountains. More attention should be paid to the spatial differentiation of drought propagation based on land use under different topographic conditions. The results of this study can provide a new perspective for future drought propagation studies.

PERSIANN-CCS-CDR, a 3-hourly 0.04° global precipitation climate data record for heavy precipitation studies.

Accurate long-term global precipitation estimates, especially for heavy precipitation rates, at fine spatial and temporal resolutions is vital for a wide variety of climatological studies. Most of the available operational precipitation estimation datasets provide either high spatial resolution with short-term duration estimates or lower spatial resolution with long-term duration estimates. Furthermore, previous research has stressed that most of the available satellite-based precipitation products show poor performance for capturing extreme events at high temporal resolution. Therefore, there is a need for a precipitation product that reliably detects heavy precipitation rates with fine spatiotemporal resolution and a longer period of record. Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks-Cloud Classification System-Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CCS-CDR) is designed to address these limitations. This dataset provides precipitation estimates at 0.04° spatial and 3-hourly temporal resolutions from 1983 to present over the global domain of 60°S to 60°N. Evaluations of PERSIANN-CCS-CDR and PERSIANN-CDR against gauge and radar observations show the better performance of PERSIANN-CCS-CDR in representing the spatiotemporal resolution, magnitude, and spatial distribution patterns of precipitation, especially for extreme events.

Predicting distribution of malaria vector larval habitats in Ethiopia by integrating distributed hydrologic modeling with remotely sensed data.

Larval source management has gained renewed interest as a malaria control strategy in Africa but the widespread and transient nature of larval breeding sites poses a challenge to its implementation. To address this problem, we propose combining an integrated high resolution (50 m) distributed hydrological model and remotely sensed data to simulate potential malaria vector aquatic habitats. The novelty of our approach lies in its consideration of irrigation practices and its ability to resolve complex ponding processes that contribute to potential larval habitats. The simulation was performed for the year of 2018 using ParFlow-Common Land Model (CLM) in a sugarcane plantation in the Oromia region, Ethiopia to examine the effects of rainfall and irrigation. The model was calibrated using field observations of larval habitats to successfully predict ponding at all surveyed locations from the validation dataset. Results show that without irrigation, at least half of the area inside the farms had a 40% probability of potential larval habitat occurrence. With irrigation, the probability increased to 56%. Irrigation dampened the seasonality of the potential larval habitats such that the peak larval habitat occurrence window during the rainy season was extended into the dry season. Furthermore, the stability of the habitats was prolonged, with a significant shift from semi-permanent to permanent habitats. Our study provides a hydrological perspective on the impact of environmental modification on malaria vector ecology, which can potentially inform malaria control strategies through better water management.

PERSIANN Dynamic Infrared-Rain Rate (PDIR-Now): A Near-Real-Time, Quasi-Global Satellite Precipitation Dataset.

This study presents the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks-Dynamic Infrared Rain Rate (PDIR-Now) near-real-time precipitation dataset. This dataset provides hourly, quasi-global, infrared-based precipitation estimates at 0.04° × 0.04° spatial resolution with a short latency (15-60 min). It is intended to supersede the PERSIANN-Cloud Classification System (PERSIANN-CCS) dataset previously produced as the near-real-time product of the PERSIANN family. We first provide a brief description of the algorithm's fundamentals and the input data used for deriving precipitation estimates. Second, we provide an extensive evaluation of the PDIR-Now dataset over annual, monthly, daily, and subdaily scales. Last, the article presents information on the dissemination of the dataset through the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) web-based interfaces. The evaluation, conducted over the period 2017-18, demonstrates the utility of PDIR-Now and its improvement over PERSIANN-CCS at all temporal scales. Specifically, PDIR-Now improves the estimation of rain/no-rain days as demonstrated by a critical success index (CSI) of 0.53 compared to 0.47 of PERSIANN-CCS. In addition, PDIR-Now improves the estimation of seasonal and diurnal cycles of precipitation as well as regional precipitation patterns erroneously estimated by PERSIANN-CCS. Finally, an evaluation is carried out to examine the performance of PDIR-Now in capturing two extreme events, Hurricane Harvey and a cluster of summer thunderstorms that occurred over the Netherlands, where it is shown that PDIR-Now adequately represents spatial precipitation patterns as well as subdaily precipitation rates with a correlation coefficient (CORR) of 0.64 for Hurricane Harvey and 0.76 for the Netherlands thunderstorms.

A cloud-free MODIS snow cover dataset for the contiguous United States from 2000 to 2017.

This article presents a cloud-free snow cover dataset with a daily temporal resolution and 0.05° spatial resolution from March 2000 to February 2017 over the contiguous United States (CONUS). The dataset was developed by completely removing clouds from the original NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Snow Cover Area product (MOD10C1) through a series of spatiotemporal filters followed by the Variational Interpolation (VI) algorithm; the filters and VI algorithm were evaluated using bootstrapping test. The dataset was validated over the period with the Landsat 7 ETM+ snow cover maps in the Seattle, Minneapolis, Rocky Mountains, and Sierra Nevada regions. The resulting cloud-free snow cover captured accurately dynamic changes of snow throughout the period in terms of Probability of Detection (POD) and False Alarm Ratio (FAR) with average values of 0.955 and 0.179 for POD and FAR, respectively. The dataset provides continuous inputs of snow cover area for hydrologic studies for almost two decades. The VI algorithm can be applied in other regions given that a proper validation can be performed.

The CHRS Data Portal, an easily accessible public repository for PERSIANN global satellite precipitation data.

The Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) has created the CHRS Data Portal to facilitate easy access to the three open data licensed satellite-based precipitation datasets generated by our Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) system: PERSIANN, PERSIANN-Cloud Classification System (CCS), and PERSIANN-Climate Data Record (CDR). These datasets have the potential for widespread use by various researchers, professionals including engineers, city planners, and so forth, as well as the community at large. Researchers at CHRS created the CHRS Data Portal with an emphasis on simplicity and the intention of fostering synergistic relationships with scientists and experts from around the world. The following paper presents an outline of the hosted datasets and features available on the CHRS Data Portal, an examination of the necessity of easily accessible public data, a comprehensive overview of the PERSIANN algorithms and datasets, and a walk-through of the procedure to access and obtain the data.

Classification and regression tree (CART) analysis for indicator bacterial concentration prediction for a Californian coastal area.

The study used existing indicator bacterial data and a number of physicochemical parameters that can be measured instantaneously to determine if a decision tree approach, especially classification and regression tree, could be used to predict bacterial concentrations in timely manner for beach closure management. Each indicator bacteria showed different tree structures and each had its own significant variables; Dissolved oxygen played an important role for both total coliform and fecal coliform and turbidity was the most important factor to predict concentrations of enterococci for decision tree approaches. Root mean squared error stayed between 5 and 6.5% of the average values of observations; RMSEs from each simulation, 0.25 for total coliform, 0.31 for fecal coliform, and 0.29 for enterococci. Estimations from tree structures would be regarded as a good representation of the actual data. In addition to results of the objective function, RMSE, 77.5% of actual value fell into the 95% of confidence interval of estimations for total coliform concentrations, 60% for fecal coliform concentrations, and 62.5% for enterococci concentrations. The approach showed reliable estimations for the majority of the data processed, although the method did not portray low concentrations of bacteria as well.

Identification and application of physical and chemical parameters to predict indicator bacterial concentration in a small Californian creek.

This study of Aliso Creek in California aimed to identify physical and chemical parameters that could be measured instantly to be used in a model to serve as surrogates for indicator bacterial concentrations during dry season flow. In this study, a new data smoothing technique and ranking/categorizing analysis was used to reduce variation to allow better delineation of the relationships between adopted variables and concentrations of indicator bacteria. The ranking/categorizing approach clarified overall trends between physico-chemical data and the indicators and suggested sources of the bacteria. This study also applied a principle component regression model to the data. Although the model was promising for predicting concentrations of total and fecal coliforms, it was somewhat weaker in predicting enteroccocci.

The challenge of predicting flash floods from thunderstorm rainfall.

A major characteristic of the hydrometeorology of semi-arid regions is the occurrence of intense thunderstorms that develop very rapidly and cause severe flooding. In summer, monsoon air mass is often of subtropical origin and is characterized by convective instability. The existing observational network has major deficiencies for those regions in providing information that is important to run-off generation. Further, because of the complex interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere, mesoscale atmospheric models are currently able to reproduce only general features of the initiation and development of convective systems. In our research, several interrelated components including the use of satellite data to monitor precipitation, data assimilation of a mesoscale regional atmospheric model, modification of the land component of the mesoscale model to better represent the semi-arid region surface processes that control run-off generation, and the use of ensemble forecasting techniques to improve forecasts of precipitation and run-off potential are investigated. This presentation discusses our ongoing research in this area; preliminary results including an investigation related to the unprecedented flash floods that occurred across the Las Vegas valley (Nevada, USA) in July of 1999 are discussed.