Submitted

Modanesi, S., Massari, C., Bechtold, M., Lievens, H., Tarpanelli, A., Brocca, L., Zappa, L. and DeLannoy, G. J. M. Challenges and benefits of quantifying irrigation through the assimilation ofSentinel-1 backscatter observations into Noah-MP. Submitted to HESS, 2022.

Published in peer reviewed journal

Elwan, E., Le Page, M., Jarlan, L., Brocca, L., Modanesi, S., Dari, J., Quintana Segui, P., Zribi, M.Irrigation mapping on two contrasted climatic contexts using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data.Water 2022, 14, 804. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14050804

Modanesi, S., Massari, C., Gruber, A., Lievens, H., Tarpanelli, A., Morbidelli, R., and De Lannoy,G. J. M. Optimizing a backscatter forward operator using Sentinel-1 data over irrigated land,Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 6283–6307, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-6283-2021, 2021.

Modanesi, S., Dari, J., Massari, C., Tarpanelli, A., Barbetta, S., De Lannoy, G. J. M., Gruber, A.,Lievens, H., Bechtold, M., Quast, R., Vreugdenhil, M., Zribi, M., Le Page, M., Brocca, L. Acomparison between satellite- and model-based approaches developed in the ESAIrrigation+project framework to estimate irrigation quantities. IEEE International Workshop onMetrology for Agriculture and Forestry (MetroAgriFor), 2021, pp. 268-272, doi:10.1109/MetroAgriFor52389.2021.9628453, 2021.

Massari, C., Modanesi, S., Dari, J., Gruber, A., De Lannoy, G.J.M., Girotto, M., Quintana-Seguí,P., Le Page, M.; Jarlan, L., Zribi, M., Ouaadi, N., Vreugdenhil, M., Zappa, L., Dorigo, W., Wagner,W., Brombacher, J., Pelgrum, H., Jaquot, P., Freeman, V., Volden, E., Fernandez Prieto, D.,Tarpanelli, A., Barbetta, S., Brocca, L. A Review of Irrigation Information Retrievals from Spaceand Their Utility for Users. Remote Sens., 13, 4112. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204112, 2021.

De Santis, D., Biondi, D., Crow, W.T., Camici, S., Modanesi, S., Brocca, L., Massari, C.Assimilation of Satellite Soil Moisture Products for River Flow Prediction: An ExtensiveExperiment in Over 700 Catchments Throughout Europe Water Resour. Res., 57, (6), Articlee2021WR029643, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR029643, 2021.

Modanesi, S., Massari, C., Camici, S., Brocca, L., Amarnath, G. Do satellite surface soil moistureobservations better retain information about crop-yield variability in drought conditions?Water Resour. Res., 56, (2), Article e2019WR025855, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025855, 2020.

Azimi, S., Dariane, A. B., Modanesi, S., Bauer-Marschallinger, B., Bindlish, R., Wagner, W., & Massari, C. (2020). Assimilation of Sentinel 1 and SMAP–based satellite soil moisture retrievals into SWAT hydrological model: the impact of satellite revisit time and product spatial resolution on flood simulations in small basins. Journal of Hydrology, 581, 124367.

Bauer-Marschallinger, B., Naeimi, V., Cao, S., Paulik, C., Schaufler, S., Stachl, T., Modanesi, S.,Massari, C., Ciabatta, L., Brocca, L., Wagner, W. Towards Global Soil Moisture Monitoring withSentinel-1: Harnessing Assets and Overcoming Obstacles. IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2018.2858004, 2018

Bauer-Marschallinger, B., Paulik, C., Hochstöger, S., Mistelbauer, T., Modanesi, S., Ciabatta, L.,Massari, C., Brocca, L., Wagner, W. Soil Moisture from Fusion of Scatterometer and SAR:Closing the Scale Gap with Temporal Filtering. Remote Sens. 2018, 10(7), 1030.https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10071030, 2018.

The research activity has as main objectives:

1) The validation and application of innovative satellite products for hydrological modelling improvement;

2) The application of satellite products for the monitoring of drought phenomena;

3) Data assimilation of hydrological variables in hydrological/land surface models.

Sara Modanesi was born in Tarquinia, Italy, in 1985. She received a M.S. degree in Applied Geology in 2012 and a Master degree in Analysis and Management of Hydrological Hazard in 2016, from Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) both with excellence. In 2022 she received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering jointly beween the University of Florence (Italy) and KU Leuven (Belgium).

From October 2017 to March 2018, she carried out an Internship with the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (IRPI) of the National Research Council (CNR) of Perugia (Italy) within the project “New technologies for Hydrogeological Risk Assessment”. 

From May 2018 to May 2019 she worked with a research scholarship at the CNR-IRPI of Perugia.

From May 2019 she is carrying out research activities as a research fellow at the CNR-IRPI of Perugia.

Her main research interests are: 1) land surface and hydrological modeling; 2) data assimilation of remote sensing observations into land surface models for improving the water cycle description and tracking the effects of the human impacts (i.e., irrigation); 3) drought monitoring through the use of remote sensing observations; and 4) validation and application of innovative satellite products for the improvement of hydrological modelling.