Study region: The Amazonas River and its tributaries (Peru), where riparian farmers face hydrological events that put their lowland crops at high risk of production loss during the flood recession period. Study focus: This paper analyzes the hydro-meteorological mechanisms over the Andes-Amazon basins that produce “repiquetes”, which are sudden reversals of the river stage. They are defined and characterized for the period 1996–2018 by using river stage data from three hydrological gauging stations for the Amazonas, Marañón and Ucayali Rivers. Daily rainfall and low-level winds depict the large-scale atmospheric patterns associated with repiquetes. New hydrological insights: Among 73 significant repiquetes (reversal ? 20 cm) observed in the Amazonas River, 64 % were preceded by repiquetes only in the Marañón River, 5 % by repiquetes only in the Ucayali River, 21 % by repiquetes...

La agricultura ribereña en épocas de recesión del caudal (junio-octubre) es una de las actividades económicas más importantes de la llanura amazónica. Sin embargo, esta labor se ve afectada por los conocidos “repiquetes”, los cuales son inundaciones repentinas que se desarrollan en plena época de recesión debido a la reversión en el nivel del río. Utilizando datos diarios de nivel del río obtenidos de las reglas limnimétricas de las estaciones localizadas en los ríos Amazonas, Marañón y Ucayali, durante el período 1996-2018; se pudo determinar que de los 73 repiquetes observados en el río Amazonas (reversión ≥ 20 cm), el 64 % de ellos fueron precedidos por repiquetes solo en el río Marañón, y el 5 % fueron repiquetes originados solo en el río Ucayali. El 21 % de los eventos fueron antecedidos por repiquetes en ambos ríos y 10 % no tuvieron precursor aguas arr...

The biodiversity and productivity of the Amazon floodplain depend on nutrients and organic matter transported with suspended sediments. Nevertheless, there are still fundamental unknowns about how hydrological and rainfall variability influence sediment flux in the Amazon River. To address this gap, we analyzed 3069 sediment samples collected every 10 days during 1995–2014 at five gauging stations located in the main rivers. We have two distinct fractions of suspended sediments, fine (clay and silt) and coarse (sand), which followed contrasting seasonal and long-term patterns. By taking these dynamics into account, it was estimated, for first time, in the Amazon plain, that the suspended sediment flux separately measured approximately 60% fine and 40% coarse sediment. We find that the fine suspended sediments flux is linked to rainfall and higher coarse suspended sediment flux is relat...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the ability of the ORCHIDEE land surface model to simulate streamflows over each sub-basin of the Amazon River basin. For this purpose, simulations are performed with a routing module including the influence of floodplains and swamps on river discharge and validated against on-site hydrological measurements collected within the HYBAM observatory over the 1980–2000 period. When forced by the NCC global meteorological dataset, the initial version of ORCHIDEE shows discrepancies with ORE HYBAM measurements with underestimation by 15 % of the annual mean streamflow at Obidos hydrological station. Consequently, several improvements are incrementally added to the initial simulation in order to reduce those discrepancies. First, values of NCC precipitation are substituted by ORE HYBAM daily in-situ rainfall observations from the meteorological services of ...