Human Activities and Climate Variability Affecting Inland Water Surface Area in a High Latitude River Basin

Spatiotemporal changes in the surface area of inland water bodies have important implications in regional water resources, flood control, and drought hazard prediction. Although inland water bodies have been investigated intensively, few studies have looked at the effect of human activities and climate variability on surface area of inland waters at a larger scale over time and space. In this study, we used MODIS (MOD13Q1) images to determine water surface area extent at 250 m spatial resolution. We then applied this algorithm with MOD13Q1 images taken at 16-day intervals from 2000 to 2018 to a large river basin in China’s northeast high latitude region with dense stream network and abundant wetlands to investigate spatiotemporal distribution and dynamics of inland water bodies. The study identified 209 ponds, lakes, and reservoirs with an average total surface area of 2080 km2 in the past 19 years. The total water surface area fluctuated largely from 942 km2 to 5169 km2, corresponding to rainfall intensity and flood. We found that the total water surface area in this high latitude river basin showed an increasing trend during the study period, while the annual precipitation amount in the river basin also had an increasing trend concurrently. Precipitation and irrigation significantly contributed to the monthly change of water surface area, which reached the highest during June and August. The increase of water surface area was significant in the lower basin floodplain region, where agricultural irrigation using groundwater for rice production has progressed. Four nationally important wetland preserves (Zhalong, Xianghai, Momoge, and Chagan Lake) in the river basin made up nearly 50% of the basin’s total water surface area, of which Zhalong, Xianghai, and Momoge are designated by The Ramsar Convention as wetland sites of international importance. Seasonally, these water bodies reached their maximal surface area in August, when both the monsoon weather and agricultural discharge prevailed. This study demonstrates that water surface area in a high latitude river basin is affected by both human activities and climate variation, implying that high latitude regions will likely experience more changes in surface water distribution as global climate change continues and agriculture becomes intensified.

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Impacts of Rapid Changes of Land Cover and Intensive Human Activities on Avarga Toson Lake Area, Mongolia

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12156070 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (15) ◽

pp. 6070

Author(s):

Urtnasan Mandakh ◽

Danzanchadav Ganbat ◽

Bayartungalag Batsaikhan ◽

Sainbayar Dalantai ◽

Zolzaya Adiya ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Cover ◽

Surface Area ◽

Human Activities ◽

Water Surface ◽

Land Development ◽

Water Area ◽

Lake Area ◽

Surrounding Area ◽

Water Surface Area

Avarga Toson Lake and its surrounding area are very important for people, wildlife, and animals in Delgerkhaan Soum of Khentii Province in Eastern Mongolia. Some research has been conducted so as to explore the medical nature and characteristics of the lake and its surrounding area. However, the adverse effects of land use have neither been studied nor reported. The fact that the water catchment area is shrinking evidences clearly that findings of various real-time studies must be used effectively in the long-term by the local government and relevant authorities in order to take immediate remedial measures. Our study focused on land cover changes occurring as a result of human activities in the area, using a Landsat imageries and water indices approach to estimate the changes of land use and land cover. The aims of this study were to assess the land use and cover change that occurred between 1989 and 2018 and to define the impacting factors on the changes of water surface area in Avarga Toson Lake area, Mongolia. Findings revealed that the water surface area has decreased by 34.1% in the past 30 years. The lake water area had the weakest, positive correlation with temperature and precipitation. We did not find any indicators suggesting a relationship between lake area and climate variables. In contrast, the area was slightly correlated with socio-economic variables, such as Toson Lake area with the number of visitors (R2 = 0.89) and Burd Lake area the with number of livestocks (R2 = 0.75), respectively. Therefore, the main conclusion of this paper is that socioeconomic factors driven by land use change, policy, and institutional failure together with the existing pressure on the lake may amplify their effect of the water surface area decreasing. Additionally, even if policy adoption is relatively sufficient in the country, the public institutional capacity to implement a successful sustainable land management model regarding land access, land development, land resources protection, land market, and investments in infrastructure remains very limited.

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Changes in the surface area of lakes in the Gwda River basin

Limnological Review ◽

10.1515/limre-2015-0002 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 121-129

Author(s):

Kubiak-Wójcicka Katarzyna ◽

Izabela Lewandowska

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Surface Area ◽

River Basin ◽

Water Surface ◽

General Trend ◽

Topographic Maps ◽

Lake Surface ◽

Water Surface Area ◽

Starting Point ◽

Lake Surface Area

Abstract This paper presents lake surface area changes that have taken place in the Gwda River basin. The studies were conducted on the basis of the cartographic materials released since the beginning of the twentieth century until the present times. The starting point was the area of all lakes greater than 1 ha which are present on the MPHP map from 2010. The assessment of the changes in the surface area of lakes in the Gwda River basin during approximately the last 100 years was possible thanks to the use of German topographic maps, so called Messtischblatt, at a scale of 1: 25 000 released between 1919 and 1944. The area of all the studied lakes has decreased by 465.09 ha (from 12783.62 ha at the beginning of the twentieth century to 12318.53 ha at the present time). Despite the general trend of lake atrophy, in particular cases one may observe an increase in the water surface area. This is the result of hydrotechnical works leading to river and lake damming, which in turn hampers the pace of atrophy.

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Quantitative Impacts of Climate Change and Human Activities on Water-Surface Area Variations from the 1990s to 2013 in Honghu Lake, China

Water ◽

10.3390/w7062881 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 7 (12) ◽

pp. 2881-2899 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Bianrong Chang ◽

Rendong Li ◽

Chuandong Zhu ◽

Kequn Liu

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Surface Area ◽

Human Activities ◽

Water Surface ◽

Water Surface Area ◽

Honghu Lake ◽

Impacts Of Climate Change

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Evaluation of Sentinel-3 SRAL SAR Altimetry over Recently Constructed Global Reservoirs

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-8012 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Xingxing Zhang ◽

Liguang jiang ◽

Zhijun Yao ◽

Zhaofei Liu ◽

Rui Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Water Surface ◽

Tracking System ◽

A Priori ◽

Open Loop ◽

Water Bodies ◽

Surface Elevation ◽

Radar Altimetry ◽

Inland Water ◽

Water Surface Elevation ◽

Inland Water Bodies

Satellite radar altimetry is increasingly being used for hydrological studies. However, it is still challenging to deliver high quality data over inland water bodies, i.e. lakes, rivers and reservoirs. One of the reasons is that the positioning of the range window is difficult due to highly variable topography and water surface elevation. To address this issue, Sentinel-3, the first SAR altimeter operating at global scale, is configured with a new on-board tracking system, i.e. open-loop mode. An open-loop tracking system can position the range window very efficiently based on a priori surface elevation stored on-board. In this context, a suitable a priori surface elevation of inland water bodies is very important.Sentinel-3 is operating based on a pseudo-DEM controlled through the Open-Loop Tracking Command (OLTC). &#160;The current OLTC V5 (operated after March 2019) is generated based on an inland water mask and Altimeter corrected Elevations (ACE-2), which is created using multi-mission Satellite Radar Altimetry from 1994-2005 in combination with the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). However, OLTC V5 still misses some inland water bodies and contains some incorrect surface elevations, especially over newly built reservoirs, where the difference between water surface elevation and ACE-2 can exceed 100m.In this study, a comprehensive evaluation of Sentinel-3A (S3A) is conducted at 26 globally-distributed recently constructed large reservoirs. The results show that S3A fails to deliver useful data over most new reservoirs in open loop due to the incorrect a priori elevations stored in OLTC V5. On the contrary, S3A closed-loop (operated before March 2019) can deliver useful data in many cases.To improve the OLTC table, we propose two approaches. The first one is to use dam height to correct the a priori surface elevation, which is relevant for very recently completed dams or dams under construction. The other is to use water surface elevation from Cryosat-2 to update the OLTC table. The approaches are demonstrated for reservoirs located on the Lancang and Nu rivers in the Southwest of China. The updated OLTC table will help exploit the Sentinel-3 radar altimetry mission to its full potential, enabling it to correctly track water surface elevation in a larger number of water bodies.

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Analysis of Retrackers’ Performances and Water Level Retrieval over the Ebro River Basin Using Sentinel-3

10.20944/preprints201811.0424.v1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Qi Gao ◽

Eduardo Makhoul ◽

Maria Jose Escorihuela ◽

Mehrez Zribi ◽

Pere Quintana Seguí ◽

...

Keyword(s):

River Basin ◽

Spatial Resolution ◽

European Space Agency ◽

Water Levels ◽

Water Bodies ◽

Altimeter Data ◽

Ebro River ◽

Inland Water ◽

Inland Water Bodies ◽

Mean Square Errors

Satellite altimeters have been used to monitor river and reservoir water levels, from which water storage estimates can be derived. Inland water altimetry can therefore play an important role in continental water resource management. Traditionally, satellite altimeters were designed to monitor homogeneous surfaces such as oceans or ice sheets, resulting in a poor performance over small inland water bodies due to the contribution from land contamination in the returned waveforms. The advent of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) altimetry (with its improved along-track spatial resolution) has enabled the measurement of inland water levels with a better accuracy and an increased spatial resolution. This paper presents three specialized algorithms or retrackers to retrieve water levels from SAR altimeter data over inland water bodies dedicated to minimizing land contamination from the waveforms. The performances of the proposed waveform portion selection method with three retrackers, namely, the threshold retracker, Offset Centre of Gravity (OCOG) retracker and 2-step physical-based retracker, are compared. Time series of water levels are retrieved for water bodies in the Ebro River basin (Spain). The results show good agreement with in situ measurements from the Ebro Reservoir (width is approximately 1.8 km) and Ribarroja Reservoir (width is approximately 400 m) with un-biased root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of approximately 0.28 m and 0.16 m, respectively. The performances of all three retrackers are also compared with the European Space Agency’s ocean retracker in the Sentinel-3 Level-2 product.

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Spatial characterization of long-term hydrological change in the Arkavathy watershed adjacent to Bangalore, India

10.5194/hess-2016-562 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Gopal Penny ◽

Veena Srinivasan ◽

Iryna Dronova ◽

Sharachchandra Lele ◽

Sally Thompson

Keyword(s):

Surface Water ◽

Surface Area ◽

Water Surface ◽

Water Bodies ◽

Groundwater Depletion ◽

Hydrological Change ◽

Water Surface Area ◽

Hydrologic Change ◽

Surface Water Bodies

Abstract. The complexity and heterogeneity of human water use over large spatial areas and decadal timescales can impede the understanding of hydrologic change, particularly in regions with sparse monitoring of the water cycle. In the Arkavathy watershed in south India, surface water inflows to major reservoirs decreased over a 40 year period during which urbanization, groundwater depletion, modification of the river network, and changes in agricultural practices also occurred. These multiple, co-varying drivers along with limited hydrological monitoring make attribution of the causes of water scarcity in the basin challenging, and limit the effectiveness of policy responses. We develop a novel, spatially distributed dataset to understand hydrologic change by characterizing trends in surface water area in nearly 1700 rainwater harvesting and irrigation structures known as tanks. Using an automated classification approach with subpixel unmixing, we classified water surface area in tanks in Landsat images from 1973 to 2010. The classification results compared well with a reference dataset of water surface area of tanks (R2 = 0.95). We modeled water surface area of 42 clusters of tanks in a multiple regression on simple hydrological covariates and time, and found distinguishable trends in water surface area in different regions of the watershed. Agricultural areas with considerable groundwater irrigation exhibited the strongest drying. Urban land use was associated with intra-urban drying, likely due to tank encroachment, and downstream periurban wetting, likely due to increased urban effluents. Disaggregating the watershed-scale hydrological response via remote sensing of surface water bodies over multiple decades yielded a spatially resolved characterization of hydrological change in an otherwise poorly monitored watershed. This approach presents an opportunity for understanding hydrological change in heavily managed watersheds where surface water bodies integrate upstream runoff and can be delineated using satellite imagery.

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Simulation of hydrological processes in the Zhalong wetland within a river basin, Northeast China

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ◽

10.5194/hess-17-2797-2013 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 17 (7) ◽

pp. 2797-2807 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

X. Q. Feng ◽

G. X. Zhang ◽

Y. Jun Xu

Keyword(s):

Surface Area ◽

River Basin ◽

Northeast China ◽

Water Surface ◽

Anthropogenic Activities ◽

Swat Model ◽

Water Volume ◽

Efficiency Coefficient ◽

Zhalong Wetland ◽

Water Surface Area

Abstract. Zhalong National Nature Preserve is a large wetland reserve on the Songnen Plain in Northeast China. Wetlands in the preserve play a key role in maintaining regional ecosystem function and integrity. Global climate change and intensified anthropogenic activities in the region have raised great concerns over the change of natural flow regime, wetland degradation and loss. In this study, two key hydrologic components in the preserve, water surface area and water volume, as well as their variations during the period 1985–2006, were investigated with a spatially-distributed hydrologic modeling system (SWAT). A wetland module was incorporated into the SWAT model to represent hydrological linkages between the wetland and adjacent upland areas. The modified modeling system was calibrated with streamflow measurements from 1987 to 1989 and was validated for the period 2005–2006. The calibration achieved a Nash efficiency coefficient (Ens) of 0.86, and the validation yielded an Ens of 0.66. In the past 20 yr, water surface area in the Zhalong wetland fluctuated from approximately 200 km2 to 1145 km2 with a rapid decreasing trend through the early 2000s. Consequently, water volume decreased largely in the preserve, especially in the dry seasons. The situation changed following the implementation of a river diversion in 2001. Overall, the modeling yielded plausible estimates of hydrologic changes in this large wetland reserve, building a foundation for assessing ecological water requirements and developing strategies and plans for future water resources management within the river basin.

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