Alice Fassoni-Andrade

• PhD
• Professor at University of Brasília

The Amazon River carries enormous amounts of sediment from the Andes mountains, much of which is deposited in its floodplains. However, accurate quantification of the sediment sink at fine spatiotemporal scales is still challenging. Here, we present a high-resolution hydrodynamic-sediment model to simulate sediment deposition in a representative Am...

Sedimentary processes cause large changes in riverscapes and alter river banks and margins, leading to major hazards for riverine communities. However, regional mapping of the resulting risk remains scarce, especially in remote Amazon regions. Here, we combine environmental observations with regional socioeconomic information to map erosion and sed...

The magnitude and temporality of the yearly maxima water levels are key parameters for the characterization of the riverine flooding hazard and its impacts. Although the Amazon estuary, that conveys the largest river discharge to the world ocean, exhibits marked events of maxima of the water level every year, the contribution of the natural drivers...

The Pantanal, the Earth's largest continuous wetland, has experienced numerous impacts due to intense alterations in land use and land cover in the highlands over the past few decades. Recognized for its seasonal flood pulses, since 2019, the Pantanal plains are currently facing a new period of extreme drought, as evidenced by the massive wildfires...

In 2023, an intense drought impacted the Amazon basin triggered by climate change and a strong El Niño event, with the Negro River reaching its lowest water level in 120 years. However, the spatiotemporal open water extent (OWE) during this drought remains unclear. This study comprehensively evaluates OWE variability in the central Amazon using Sen...

Increasing climatic and human pressures are changing the world's water resources and hydrological processes at unprecedented rates. Understanding these changes requires comprehensive monitoring of water resources. Hydrogeodesy, the science that measures the Earth's solid and aquatic surfaces, gravity field, and their changes over time, delivers a r...

Pantanal is the largest tropical wetland in the world. It has long been threatened by anthropic activities and has been facing reccurent and intense droughts, which are closely related to precipitation. The Pantanal region, however, has limited precipitation measurements by rain gauges, both in space and time. Alternatively, remote sensing products...

In late 2023, the Amazon River Basin experienced its most extreme drought, putting its population and ecosystem at major risks. Gauges that were still functioning measured the lowest river water levels (RWL) on record. Here, satellite observations, including Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT), reveal the spread and timing of extremely low RWL ac...

Reservoir cascades are built on many rivers around the world in order to use water resources for power generation and human supply. In this work, the impact of a reservoir cascade on sediment transport and deposition in time and space was studied. The study area chosen was the Paranapanema River basin, which has 10 reservoirs in the main river. The...

O livro Hidrologia da Amazônia vista do espaço: avanços científicos e desafios futuroso é uma tradução do artigo de revisão não sistemática publicado em 2021 na Review of Geophysics (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020RG000728). O livro apresenta uma extensa revisão das conquistas de mais de três décadas de avanços científicos...

Climate change can affect all levels of society and the planet. Recent studies have shown its effects on sediment fluxes in several locations worldwide, which can impact ecosystems and infrastructure such as reservoirs. In this study, we focused on simulating sediment fluxes using projections of future climate change for South America (SA), a conti...

Extensive floodplains throughout the Amazon basin support important ecosystem services and influence global water and carbon cycles. A recent change in the hydroclimatic regime of the region, with increased rainfall in the northern portions of the basin, has produced record-breaking high water levels on the Amazon River mainstem. Yet, the implicati...

Mirim lagoon is the second largest lacustrine water body in Southern Brazil, providing water for local communities. However, algae growth and water quality in the lagoon and in tributaries rivers is infl uenced by nutrient's increase. I n this context, this study performs the empirical and semi-empirical chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) modeling using remote...

The Amazon River basin harbors some of the world's largest wetland complexes, which are of major importance for biodiversity, the water cycle and climate, and human activities. Accurate estimates of inundation extent and its variations across spatial and temporal scales are therefore fundamental to understand and manage the basin's resources. More...

The Amazon yields the largest freshwater discharge to the world ocean, outflowing on a shallow, macro-tidal shelf. Its plume dynamics is complex and the impact of the discharge on the tidal properties on the adjoining shelf remains poorly understood. Through a series of numerical modelling experiment, we investigate the interaction between the Amaz...

Satellite observations offer invaluable insights into hydrological processes and environmental change in the Amazon. The Amazon Basin is the largest river basin in the world. It covers roughly six million square kilometers, which is about one third of South America. While the sheer scale and difficulty of access makes field observations challengin...

As the largest river basin on Earth, the Amazon is of major importance to the world's climate and water resources. Over the past decades, advances in satellite‐based remote sensing (RS) have brought our understanding of its terrestrial water cycle and the associated hydrological processes to a new era. Here, we review major studies and the various...

A Antártica é importante para o planeta devido à sua sensibilidade às mudanças climáticas, que podem intensificar os recuos na frente de geleiras localizadas na Antártica Marítima. O objetivo deste trabalho foi mapear e analisar a variabilidade no avanço e recuo na frente da geleira Collins (Península Fildes, Antártica) entre 1986 e 2017 utilizando...

The characterization of estuarine hydrodynamics primarily depends on knowledge of the bathymetry and topography. Here, we present the first comprehensive, high-resolution dataset of the topography and bathymetry of the Amazon River estuary, the world's largest estuary. Our product is based on an innovative approach combining spaceborne remote sensi...

As the largest river basin on Earth, the Amazon is of major importance to the world's climate and water resources. Over the past decades, advances in satellite-based remote sensing (RS) have brought our understanding of its terrestrial water cycle and the associated hydrological processes to a new era. Here, we review major studies and the various...

The characterization of estuarine hydrodynamics primarily depends on the knowledge of bathymetry and topography. Here we present the first comprehensive, high-resolution dataset of the topography and bathymetry of the Amazon River estuary, the world's largest estuary. Our product is based on an innovative approach combining space-borne remote sensi...

Terrain elevation is essential for land management, navigation, and earth science applications. Remote sensing advancements have led to an increase in the availability of a range of digital elevation models with global to quasi-global land coverage. However, the generation of these models in water bodies requires specialized approaches , such as th...

The Linear Spectral Mixing Model (LSMM) technique has been used in remote sensing applications and allows the estimation of the proportional contribution of different constituents in the pixel reflectance. Despite the great potential for vegetation and land cover studies, there are few studies examining the LSMM efficiency for optically complex inl...

Topography is critical information for water resources management in lakes, and remote sensing provides a unique opportunity to estimate topography in ungauged regions. We introduce here a new method that estimates nearshore topography of water bodies based on a flood frequency map and time series of water levels by assuming the equivalence between...

Terrain elevation data are essential for land management, navigation, and earth science applications. Digital elevation models (DEMs) can be created for land as well as underwater surfaces, and remote sensing advancements have led to the increase in the availability of a range of DEMs over the land. However, the generation of underwater DEMs usuall...

Topography is critical information for water resources management in lakes, and remote sensing provides a unique opportunity to estimate it in ungauged regions. We introduce here a new method which estimates near shore topography of water bodies based on a flood frequency map and time series of water levels by assuming the equivalence between flood...

Sediment models are important for estimating soil erosion, sediment transport, and deposition at different scales and for disparate scenarios; however, the availability of in-situ measurements may not be sufficient for the appropriate evaluation of model performance. For this reason, this study investigated how surrogate data (water quality [WQ] an...

O monitoramento da qualidade da água é uma atividade essencial para o controle ambiental dos recursos hídricos, sendo a eutrofização uma das principais ameaças às águas interiores. Neste contexto, o sensoriamento remoto tem se tornado uma alternativa ao monitoramento, devido à ampla faixa de imageamento e alta frequência de aquisição de dados. Assi...

A degradação da qualidade de água nos corpos hídricos pode ocorrer tanto por ações antropogênicas, como por fatores naturais. A Lagoa Mirim é considerada a segunda maior lagoa do Brasil, possuindo uma grande importância no aspecto econômico, social e ambiental para a região sul. Considerando esses aspectos, é de suma importância verificar a qualida...

Pantanal, located in the Upper Paraguay basin, is the world's largest tropical wetland. The maintenance of this ecosystem depends on the water balance since precipitation is seasonal and high losses of water occur due to the high evapotranspiration. Water balance assessment using in situ data is still a challenge due to the large extension of the a...

Water composition in floodplains plays a key role in ecological processes and is affected by both local water sources and flooding from the main river. Despite local studies, still lacks a complete understanding on the relationship between hydrological processes and sediment distribution in the river-floodplain system of the Amazon basin. This pape...

Sobradinho reservoir has been suffering a severe water loss caused by multi-year drought in the Northeast Brazil. This reservoir contributes to the socio-economic development of the semi-arid region, and the monitoring of water shortage is crucial for people living in this climate-vulnerable region. In this study, we evaluate the surface water chan...

Understanding spatial and temporal variations of the agronomic conditions of cultivated pastures is essential for defining guidelines and actions of public and private policies to increase livestock productivity. Within this context, this study aimed to evaluate the trends of degradation of the Cerrado biome cultivated pastures found in Minas Gerai...

The one-dimensional flow routing inertial model, formulated as an explicit solution, has advantages over other explicit models used in hydrological models that simplify the Saint-Venant equations. The main advantage is a simple formulation with good results. However, the inertial model is restricted to a small time step to avoid numerical instabili...

Understanding about type and concentration of components in large continental waterbodies is of great value to environmental studies. The synoptic view of multispectral remote-sensing images has the potential to systematically estimate important parameters like suspended solids (SS) and chlorophyll (Chl). However, measures derived directly from rad...

A erosão do solo é um processo que pode acarretar diversos prejuízos ao meio ambiente, desde a diminuição da fertilidade e produtividade do solo até o assoreamento de corpos d’água. Esse processo pode ser visto de forma intensa na bacia hidrográfica do rio Doce, sendo essa considerada uma das bacias brasileiras com maior concentração média de sedim...

The climate change phenomena have been influencing terrestrial and glacial ecosystems around the planet. Maritime Antarctica is especially sensitive to these climate variations and over the last 50 years increasing global air temperatures have caused extensive glacial retreat. The objective of this study is to evaluate the potential use of the SAR...

The Guaiba Lake is located in the Metropolitan area of Porto Alegre, on the coastal portion of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The release of untreated domestic sewage is a major responsible for deteriorating water quality of the Lake. The addition of organic matter and nutrient content (mainly nitrogen and phosphorus) cause the process of eutrophi...