Improving the Accuracy of Groundwater Storage Estimates Based on Groundwater Weighted Fusion Model

It is an effective measure to estimate groundwater storage anomalies (GWSA) by combining Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data and hydrological models. However, GWSA results based on a single hydrological model and GRACE data may have greater uncertainties, and it is difficult to verify in some regions where in situ groundwater-level measurements are limited. First, to solve this problem, a groundwater weighted fusion model (GWFM) is presented, based on the extended triple collocation (ETC) method. Second, the Shiyang River Basin (SYRB) is taken as an example, and in situ groundwater-level measurements are used to evaluate the performance of the GWFM. The comparison indicates that the correlation coefficient (CC) and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSE) are increased by 9–40% and 23–657%, respectively, relative to the original results. Moreover, the root mean squared error (RMSE) is reduced by 9–28%, which verifies the superiority of the GWFM. Third, the spatiotemporal distribution and influencing factors of GWSA in the Hexi Corridor (HC) are comprehensively analyzed during the period between 2003 and 2016. The results show that GWSA decline, with a trend of −2.37 ± 0.38 mm/yr from 2003 to 2010, and the downward trend after 2011 (−0.46 ± 1.35 mm/yr) slow down significantly compared to 2003–2010. The spatial distribution obtained by the GWFM is more reliable compared to the arithmetic average results, and GWFM-based GWSA fully retain the advantages of different models, especially in the southeastern part of the SYRB. Additionally, a simple index is used to evaluate the contributions of climatic factors and human factors to groundwater storage (GWS) in the HC and its different subregions. The index indicates that climate factors occupy a dominant position in the SLRB and SYRB, while human factors have a significant impact on GWS in the Heihe River Basin (HRB). This study can provide suggestions for the management and assessments of groundwater resources in some arid regions.

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Improved Understanding of Groundwater Storage Changes under the Influence of River Basin Governance in Northwestern China Using GRACE Data

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs13142672 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (14) ◽

pp. 2672

Author(s):

Xin Liu ◽

Litang Hu ◽

Kangning Sun ◽

Zhengqiu Yang ◽

Jianchong Sun ◽

...

Keyword(s):

River Basin ◽

Groundwater Level ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Water Storage ◽

Northwestern China ◽

In Situ Observation ◽

Observation Data ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

Grace Data

Groundwater is crucial for economic development in arid and semiarid areas. The Shiyang River Basin (SRB) has the most prominent water use issues in northwestern China, and overexploited groundwater resources have led to continuous groundwater-level decline. The key governance planning project of the SRB was issued in 2007. This paper synthetically combines remote-sensing data from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data and precipitation, actual evapotranspiration, land use, and in situ groundwater-level data to evaluate groundwater storage variations on a regional scale. Terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSA) and groundwater storage anomalies (GWSA), in addition to their influencing factors in the SRB since the implementation of the key governance project, are analyzed in order to evaluate the effect of governance. The results show that GRACE-derived GWS variations are consistent with in situ observation data in the basin, with a correlation coefficient of 0.68. The GWS in the SRB had a slow downward trend from 2003 to 2016, and this increased by 0.38 billion m³/year after 2018. As the meteorological data did not change significantly, the changes in water storage are mainly caused by human activities, which are estimated by using the principle of water balance. The decline in GWS in the middle and lower reaches of the SRB has been curbed since 2009 and has gradually rebounded since 2014. GWS decreased by 2.2 mm EWH (equivalent water height) from 2011 to 2016, which was 91% lower than that from 2007 to 2010. The cropland area in the middle and lower reaches of the SRB also stopped increasing after 2011 and gradually decreased after 2014, while the area of natural vegetation gradually increased, indicating that the groundwater level and associated ecology significantly recovered after the implementation of the project.

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Estimation of Groundwater Storage Variations in Indus River Basin Using Grace Data

ICASSP 2021 - 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) ◽

10.1109/icassp39728.2021.9413591 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Yahya Sattar ◽

Zubair Khalid

Keyword(s):

River Basin ◽

Indus River ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

Grace Data ◽

Indus River Basin

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Assessing Impacts of Climate Extremes and Human Water Use on GRACE Total Water Storage Trends in Major U.S. Aquifers

10.5194/gstm2020-61 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Bridget Scanlon ◽

Ashraf Rateb ◽

Alexander Sun ◽

Himanshu Save

Keyword(s):

Surface Water ◽

Water Use ◽

Groundwater Level ◽

Water Storage ◽

Climate Extremes ◽

High Plains ◽

Total Water ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

Grace Data ◽

The U.S

There is considerable concern about water depletion caused by climate extremes (e.g., drought) and human water use in the U.S. and globally. Major U.S. aquifers provide an ideal laboratory to assess water storage changes from GRACE satellites because the aquifers are intensively monitored and modeled. The objective of this study was to assess the relative importance of climate extremes and human water use on GRACE Total Water Storage Anomalies in 14 major U.S. aquifers and to evaluate the reliability of the GRACE data by comparing with groundwater level monitoring (~-23,000 wells) and regional and global models. We quantified total water and groundwater storage anomalies over 2002 &#8211; 2017 from GRACE satellites and compared GRACE data with groundwater level monitoring and regional and global modeling results. &#160; The results show that water storage changes were controlled primarily by climate extremes and amplified or dampened by human water use, primarily irrigation. The results were somewhat surprising, with stable or rising long-term trends in the majority of aquifers with large scale depletion limited to agricultural areas in the semi-arid southwest and southcentral U.S. GRACE total water storage in the California Central Valley and Central/Southern High Plains aquifers was depleted by drought and amplified by groundwater irrigation, totaling ~70 km3 (2002&#8211;2017), about 2&#215; the capacity of Lake Mead, the largest surface reservoir in the U.S. In the Pacific Northwest and Northern High Plains aquifers, lower drought intensities were partially dampened by conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater for irrigation and managed aquifer recharge, increasing water storage by up to 22 km3 in the Northern High Plains over the 15 yr period. GRACE-derived total water storage changes in the remaining aquifers were stable or slightly rising throughout the rest of the U.S. GRACE data compared favorably with composite groundwater level hydrographs for most aquifers except for those with very low signals, indicating that GRACE tracks groundwater storage dynamics. Comparison with regional models was restricted to the limited overlap periods but showed good correspondence for modeled aquifers with the exception of the Mississippi Embayment, where the modeled trend is 4x the GRACE trend. The discrepancy is attributed to uncertainties in model storage parameters and groundwater/surface water interactions. Global hydrologic models (WGHM-2d and PCR-GLOBWB-5.0 overestimated trends in groundwater storage in heavily exploited aquifers in the southwestern and southcentral U.S. Land surface models (CLSM-F2.5 and NOAH-MP) seem to track GRACE TWSAs better than global hydrologic models but underestimated TWS trends in aquifers dominated by irrigation. Intercomparing GRACE, traditional hydrologic monitoring, and modeling data underscore the importance of considering all data sources to constrain water storage changes.&#160; GRACE satellite data have critical implications for many nationally important aquifers, highlighting the importance of conjunctively using surface-water and groundwater and managed aquifer recharge to enhance sustainable development.

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Understanding the effects of climate warming on streamflow and active groundwater storage in an alpine catchment: the upper Lhasa River

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ◽

10.5194/hess-24-1145-2020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 1145-1157

Author(s):

Lu Lin ◽

Man Gao ◽

Jintao Liu ◽

Jiarong Wang ◽

Shuhong Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

River Basin ◽

Air Temperature ◽

Climate Warming ◽

Gray Relational Analysis ◽

Permafrost Degradation ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

Alpine Regions ◽

Grace Data ◽

Lhasa River Basin ◽

Lhasa River

Abstract. Climate warming is changing streamflow regimes and groundwater storage in cold alpine regions. In this study, the Yangbajain headwater catchment in the Lhasa River basin is adopted as the study area to assess streamflow changes and active groundwater storage in response to climate warming. The results show that both annual streamflow and the mean air temperature increase significantly at respective rates of about 12.30 mm per decade and 0.28 ∘C per decade from 1979 to 2013 in the study area. The results of gray relational analysis indicate that the air temperature acts as a primary factor for the increased streamflow. Due to climate warming, the total glacier volume has retreated by over 25 % during the past 50 years, and the areal extent of permafrost has degraded by 15.3 % over the last 20 years. Parallel comparisons with other subbasins in the Lhasa River basin indirectly reveal that the increased streamflow at the Yangbajain Station is mainly fed by the accelerated glacier retreat. Using baseflow recession analysis, we also find that the estimated groundwater storage that is comparable with the GRACE data increases significantly at rates of about 19.32 mm per decade during the abovementioned period. That is to say, as permafrost thaws, more spaces have been made available to accommodate the increasing meltwater. Finally, a large water imbalance (of more than 5.79×107 m3 a−1) between the melt-derived runoff and the actual increase in runoff as well as the groundwater storage is also observed. The results from this study suggest that the impacts of glacial retreat and permafrost degradation show compound behaviors on the storage–discharge mechanism due to climate warming, and that this fundamentally affects the water supply and the mechanisms of streamflow generation and change.

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Validation of GRACE based groundwater storage anomaly using in-situ groundwater level measurements in India

Journal of Hydrology ◽

10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.10.042 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 543 ◽

pp. 729-738 ◽

Cited By ~ 51

Author(s):

Soumendra N. Bhanja ◽

Abhijit Mukherjee ◽

Dipankar Saha ◽

Isabella Velicogna ◽

James S. Famiglietti

Keyword(s):

Groundwater Level ◽

Groundwater Storage

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Exploring meso-scale soil water and groundwater storage changes within the USA through a Bayesian combination of GRACE data with monthly 12.5 km model simulations

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19070 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Nooshin Mehrnegar ◽

Owen Jones ◽

Michael B. Singer ◽

Maike Schumacher ◽

Thomas Jagdhuber ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Data Assimilation ◽

Soil Water ◽

Water Storage ◽

Balance Model ◽

Soil Water Storage ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

In Situ Data ◽

Grace Data ◽

The Usa

Climatic changes in precipitation intensity across the United States (USA) may also affect the frequency and magnitude of drought and flooding events, with potentially serious consequences for water supply across this country. Reliable estimation of water storage changes in the soil root zone and groundwater aquifers is important for predicting future water availability, drought and flood monitoring and weather prediction. In this study, we assimilate Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) derived from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite observations into a water balance model with 12.5-km spatial resolution. Our goal is to explore meso-scale surface and deep-level soil water storage, as well as groundwater changes within the USA covering the period 2003-2017. A new Bayesian approach is formulated and implemented in this study, which provides a dynamic solution for a state-space equation between hydrological model outputs and TWS observations, while considering their error structures. The unknown state parameters and temporal dependency between them are estimated through a combination of forward/backward Kalman Filtering and Markov Chain Monto Carlo (MCMC) methods.The outputs of this methodological approach are evaluated using in situ data from historical USGS groundwater data (over 6600 wells) and the ESA CCI surface soil moisture data. The results indicate that our GRACE data assimilation generally improves the simulation of groundwater and soil moisture across the USA. For example, the long-term linear trend fitted to the Bayesian-derived groundwater and soil water storage are in a same direction as those of in situ data in 63% and 58% of regions studied across the USA, respectively. However, this vale is estimated less than 51% for both water storage estimates derived from the original water balance model, which suggesting that the data assimilation modulates the hydrological models to perform more realistically. The biggest improvements are observed in the southeast USA with considerably large inter-annual variability in precipitation, where modelled groundwater apparently responded too strongly to the changes in atmospheric forcing. The Bayesian data assimilation method also improves the temporal correlation coefficients between the in situ USGS and ESA CCI data and model outputs after merging with GRACE TWS estimates. For instance, the correlation coefficient between groundwater storage and USGS observation increased from -0.52 to 0.48 and from -0.28 to 0.25 in southeast and southwest of USA, respectively. Finally, we will explore changes in Bayesian-derived groundwater and soil water storage within the Florida, California and South of Mississippi regions and interpret their relations with climate-induced factors such as precipitation and ENSO index.Keywords: USA; Data Assimilation; Bayesian Method; Kalman Filtering; MCMC; GRACE; W3RA; groundwater storage; soil water storage; USGS; ESA CCI.&#160;

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Depleting groundwater – an opportunity for flood storage? A case study from part of the Ganges River basin, India

Hydrology Research ◽

10.2166/nh.2016.261 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 431-441 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Pennan Chinnasamy

Keyword(s):

River Basin ◽

Ganges River ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

Policy Interventions ◽

Grace Data ◽

Ramganga River ◽

Recharge Rates ◽

Water Surplus ◽

Gravity Recovery ◽

The Ganges

Storing excess rainwater underground can become key in mitigating the frequency and magnitude of flood events. In this context, assessment of depleted groundwater storage that can be refilled in water surplus periods is imperative. The study uses Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data to identify variations in groundwater storage in the monsoonal Ramganga River basin (tributary of the Ganges, with an area of 32,753 km2) in India, over the 9-year period of 2002–2010. Results indicate that basin groundwater storage is depleting at the rate of 1.6 bill. m3 yr−1. This depleted aquifer volume can be used to store floodwater effectively – up to 76% of the rainfall on average across the Ramganga with a maximum of 94% in parts of the basin. However, the major management challenge is to find and introduce technical and policy interventions to augment recharge rates to capture excess water, at required scales.

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Monitoring Groundwater Storage Depletion Using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Data in Bakhtegan Catchment, Iran

Water ◽

10.3390/w11071456 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (7) ◽

pp. 1456 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Nizar Abou Zaki ◽

Ali Torabi Haghighi ◽

Pekka M. Rossi ◽

Mohammad J. Tourian ◽

Bjørn Kløve

Keyword(s):

Groundwater Level ◽

Water Mass ◽

Water Volume ◽

Groundwater Depletion ◽

Drought Period ◽

Grace Data ◽

Depletion Rate ◽

Gravity Recovery ◽

Derived Data

The Bakhtegan catchment, an important agricultural region in south-western Iran, has suffered groundwater depletion in recent years. As groundwater is considered the main source of fresh water in the catchment, especially for agriculture, monitoring groundwater responses to irrigation is important. Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data can help determine water mass changes in catchments and assess water volume changes. In this study, we compared GRACE-derived water mass data against groundwater volume variations measured in situ. We also assessed the efficiency of GRACE-derived data in catchments smaller than the 200,000 km2 recommended area when using GRACE. For the study period (January 2002 through December 2011), the GRACE data showed a 7.6 mm annual decline in groundwater level, with a total volume loss of 2.6 km3 during the period. The in situ monthly measurements of groundwater level showed an average depletion of 10 m in catchment aquifers during the study period. This depletion rate was supported by the recorded decrease in precipitation volume, especially in the post-drought period after 2007. These results demonstrate that GRACE can be useful tool for monitoring groundwater depletion in arid catchments.

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Groundwater storage change in the Jinsha River basin from GRACE, hydrologic models, and in situ data

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-1281 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Nengfang Chao

Keyword(s):

Sediment Transport ◽

River Basin ◽

Human Activities ◽

Water Storage ◽

Hydrologic Models ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

Jinsha River ◽

In Situ Data ◽

Storage Change

Groundwater plays a major role in the hydrological processes driven by climate change and human activities, particularly in upper mountainous basins. The Jinsha River Basin (JRB) is the uppermost region of the Yangtze River and the largest hydropower production region in China. With the construction of artificial cascade reservoirs increasing in this region, the annual and seasonal flows are changing and affecting the water cycles. Here, we first infer the groundwater storage changes (GWSC), accounting for sediment transport in JRB, by combining the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, hydrologic models and in situ data. The results indicate: (1) the average estimation of the GWSC trend, accounting for sediment transport in JRB, is 0.76&#177;0.10 cm/year during the period 2003&#8211;2015, and the contribution of sediment transport accounts for 15%; (2) precipitation (P), evapotranspiration (ET), soil moisture change (SMC), GWSC and land water storage changes (LWSC) show clear seasonal cycles; the interannual trends of LWSC and GWSC increase, but P, runoff (R), surface water storage change (SWSC) and SMC decrease, and ET remains basically unchanged; (3) the main contributor to the increase in LWSC in JRB is GWSC, and the increased GWSC may be dominated by human activities, such as cascade damming, and climate variations (such as snow and glacier melt due to increased temperatures). This study can provide valuable information regarding JRB in China for understanding GWSC patterns and exploring their implications for regional water management.

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