Department of Climate and Ocean Sciences

• Terrain Surface height in whole metres on the plan’s grid of cells about three hundred by four hundred metres; the Monferrato hills reach about five hundred metres Produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved. read 2026-10-17. Estimate: A digital surface model: trees and roofs are in the heights. Relief exaggeration is printed on the stage.
• Rivers and named canals The Po, its tributaries and the longest named irrigation canals of the plain as centrelines, with their length by class. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. data as of 2026-07-15. Estimate: Centrelines as mapped, simplified to 25 m and capped at the 700 longest ways; no discharge or width is implied by the line.
• River discharge, GloFAS via Open-Meteo Daily river discharge with the member range for the next 30 days at the plan’s cell, and on click anywhere in the box. Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0); river discharge: contains modified Copernicus Emergency Management Service information 2026 (GloFAS); never a flood warning. Live: this page requests flood-api.open-meteo.com when the layer is opened; the data date is printed with it. Estimate: Model output (forecast or reanalysis), shown with the member range where the API gives one; never a warning. The flow-duration percentile instrument adds one request to the same endpoint with start_date=1984-01-01 and end_date=today for the chosen cell (not separately probed).
• Vegetation index, MODIS Terra NDVI 8-day Vegetation greenness over the plain and hills; scrubbing the season steps the time dimension through the 8-day periods of the current and previous year. MODIS Terra NDVI 8-day, NASA LP DAAC / LANCE, via NASA GIBS, with the product date. Live: this page requests gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov when the layer is opened; the data date is printed with it. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Estimate: An indicator of vegetation condition, never yield, production or a biodiversity measure.
• Soil moisture, SMAP L3 (daily) Surface soil moisture from the SMAP radiometer as a drought indicator for the plain. SMAP L3 passive enhanced soil moisture (day), NASA, via NASA GIBS, with the product date. Live: this page requests gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov when the layer is opened; the data date is printed with it. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Estimate: A satellite retrieval of the top few centimetres, not root-zone or field measurement.
• Precipitation rate, GPM IMERG (30 minutes) Satellite precipitation estimate for the half hour shown. GPM IMERG precipitation (30 min), NASA GES DISC, via NASA GIBS, with the product time. Live: this page requests gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov when the layer is opened; the data date is printed with it. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Estimate: Satellite estimate, near real time; not a gauge reading or a forecast.
• Surface water extent, OPERA DSWx (HLS) Open and partial surface water classes on the date shown, as the flood and low-water indicator of the reach. OPERA Dynamic Surface Water Extent from HLS, NASA JPL OPERA (Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Landsat input: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data), via NASA GIBS, with the product date. Live: this page requests gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov when the layer is opened; the data date is printed with it. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Estimate: A classification from optical imagery; clouds leave gaps; never a flood warning or a risk rating.
• True colour at 30 m, HLS Sentinel-2 (daily granules) The newest Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 granules over the plain in true colour at 30 metres: fields, rice paddies, the river bed and the towns. NASA HLS S30 Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance, NASA LP DAAC (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026), via NASA GIBS, with the product date. Live: this page requests gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov when the layer is opened; the data date is printed with it. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Estimate: Surface reflectance shown as published; clouds and gaps between granules stay visible; never a classification.

Why this place: One box of about seventy by fifty kilometres holds a main-stem reach of the Po with the Sesia and Dora Baltea confluences, the Monferrato hills on its right bank and the irrigated rice plain of Vercelli on its left, fed by the Canale Cavour, so catchment hydrology, water allocation to food, floods (1994, 2000, 2016) and the 2022 drought can all be read at one scale. Data quality: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 covers the relief in one 1-degree tile, OpenStreetMap maps the rivers and named canals, the disciplines of GloFAS grid reaches the reach through Open-Meteo, MODIS and Sentinel-2 revisit the plain every few days and the box sits in Sentinel-2 tile 32TMQ. It connects to the Water security and hydrology, Food systems and agriculture and Climate science, variability and change of the atlas and to the water and food nexus field maps of the ecosystem sites, which draw on the same sources.