Water level changes in Swedish lake systems using pixel-specific Sentinel-1 phase change

Author(s):  
Saeid Aminjafari ◽  
Fernando Jaramillo

<p>Sweden has approximately 100,000 lakes covering roughly nine percent of the country’s surface area. These lakes are one of the important sources of fresh water for urban, industrial, and agricultural use, further providing a wide range of ecosystem services. In order to conserve and protect the lakes from the impacts of climate change, hydrologic monitoring should ideally be conducted in all of these lakes. However, it is almost impossible to gauge all of these lakes on a regular basis, due to economical and logistic constraints. Radar altimetry has been successfully used to obtain water levels from specific lakes; however, the technology can only be used in large lakes that are located precisely under the orbit of the satellite, thus excluding most Swedish lakes. We here develop a new procedure based on the application of differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR) on sequential image pairs with short temporal baseline to measure the water level of 36 lakes. We processed Sentinel-1 twin satellite data with 6-day revisiting intervals, pair by pair, from March 2019 to November 2019. In total, we constructed 41 interferograms considering only the pixels with coherence values greater than 0.2 in all interferograms to ensure consistent scattering and good coherence in all images. We found that the pixels located near tree trunks in flat areas or near steep cliffs in mountainous areas showed a steady phase change in all interferograms that could be converted to water level change. In some of these lakes, the water level changes derived from this methodology correlated well with the in-situ water level of the gauge stations provided by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. We believe that this methodology has good potential for monitoring water level data in small lakes that cannot be monitored by radar altimetry, and serves as evidence of the unknown potential of DInSAR to track hydrological changes in open water surfaces.</p>

Ocean Science ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Park ◽  
W. V. Sweet ◽  
R. Heitsenrether

Abstract. Seiches are normal modes of water bodies responding to geophysical forcings with potential to significantly impact ecology and maritime operations. Analysis of high-frequency (1 Hz) water level data in Monterey, California, identifies harbor modes between 10 and 120 s that are attributed to specific geographic features. It is found that modal amplitude modulation arises from cross-modal interaction and that offshore wave energy is a primary driver of these modes. Synchronous coupling between modes is observed to significantly impact dynamic water levels. At lower frequencies with periods between 15 and 60 min, modes are independent of offshore wave energy, yet are continuously present. This is unexpected since seiches normally dissipate after cessation of the driving force, indicating an unknown forcing. Spectral and kinematic estimates of these low-frequency oscillations support the idea that a persistent anticyclonic mesoscale gyre adjacent to the bay is a potential mode driver, while discounting other sources.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 2651
Author(s):  
Qiang Liu ◽  
Liqiao Liang ◽  
Xiaomin Yuan ◽  
Sirui Yan ◽  
Miao Li ◽  
...  

Water level fluctuations play a critical role in regulating vegetation distribution, composition, cover and richness, which ultimately affect evapotranspiration. In this study, we first explore water level fluctuations and associated impacts on vegetation, after which we assess evapotranspiration (ET) under different water levels. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used to estimate the fractional vegetation cover (Fv), while topography- and vegetation-based surface-energy partitioning algorithms (TVET model) and potential evaporation (Ev) were used to calculate ET and water evaporation (Ep). Results show that: (1) water levels were dramatically affected by the combined effect of ecological water transfer and climate change and exhibited significant decreasing trends with a slope of −0.011 m a−2; and (2) as predicted, there was a correlation between water level fluctuation at an annual scale with Phragmites australis (P. australis) cover and open-water area. Water levels also had a controlling effect on Fv values, an increase in annual water levels first increasing and then decreasing Fv. However, a negative correlation was found between Fv values and water levels during initial plant growth stages. (iii) ET, which varied under different water levels at an annual scale, showed different partition into transpiration from P. australis and evaporation from open-water area and soil with alterations between vegetation and open water. All findings indicated that water level fluctuations controlled biological and ecological processes, and their structural and functional characteristics. This study consequently recommends that specifically-focused ecological water regulations (e.g., duration, timing, frequency) should be enacted to maintain the integrity of wetland ecosystems for wetland restoration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 223 (2) ◽  
pp. 1288-1303
Author(s):  
K Strehlow ◽  
J Gottsmann ◽  
A Rust ◽  
S Hautmann ◽  
B Hemmings

Summary Aquifers are poroelastic bodies that respond to strain by changes in pore pressure. Crustal deformation due to volcanic processes induces pore pressure variations that are mirrored in well water levels. Here, we investigate water level changes in the Belham valley on Montserrat over the course of 2 yr (2004–2006). Using finite element analysis, we simulate crustal deformation due to different volcanic strain sources and the dynamic poroelastic aquifer response. While some additional hydrological drivers cannot be excluded, we suggest that a poroelastic strain response of the aquifer system in the Belham valley is a possible explanation for the observed water level changes. According to our simulations, the shallow Belham aquifer responds to a steadily increasing sediment load due to repeated lahar sedimentation in the valley with rising aquifer pressures. A wholesale dome collapse in May 2006 on the other hand induced dilatational strain and thereby a short-term water level drop in a deeper-seated aquifer, which caused groundwater leakage from the Belham aquifer and thereby induced a delayed water level fall in the wells. The system thus responded to both gradual and rapid transient strain associated with the eruption of Soufrière Hills Volcano (Montserrat). This case study gives field evidence for theoretical predictions on volcanic drivers behind hydrological transients, demonstrating the potential of hydrological data for volcano monitoring. Interrogation of such data can provide valuable constraints on stress evolution in volcanic systems and therefore complement other monitoring systems. The presented models and inferred results are conceptually applicable to volcanic areas worldwide.


1984 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. J. Lieffers

Emergent vegetation was sampled in 15 oxbow lakes in a 50-km segment of the Athabasca River in northeastern Alberta. Cover of individual species was visually assessed in plots at the outer, middle, and (or) inner edge of the emergent zone of each lake (n, 37 sample units). Detrended correspondence analysis showed two main axes of variation. The first axis related to salinity. Water conductivity ranged from 170 to 12200 μS cm−1 and community types ranged from freshwater fens to saline wetland communities dominated by Scolochloa festucacea, Scirpus maritimus, and Triglochin maritima. The second axis of variation related to water-level fluctuations. Half of the lakes had an increase in water level in the recent past (ca. 6–30 years). In these lakes, Typha latifolia was dominant in both grounded and floating substrates subjected to increased water levels. Sedge communities dominated by Carex rostrata, C. aquatilis, and Acorus calamus were common in sites with stable water levels. In freshwater lakes, floating substrates were established over open water by the lateral growth of floating stems of Calla palustris and Potentilla palustris. Floating substrates were not in the saline sites probably because these open-water colonizers were not present under saline regimes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liisa Nevalainen ◽  
Kaarina Sarmaja-Korjonen ◽  
Tomi P. Luoto

AbstractThe usability of subfossil Cladocera assemblages in reconstructing long-term changes in lake level was examined by testing the relationship between Cladocera-based planktonic/littoral (P/L) ratio and water-level inference model in a surface-sediment dataset and in a 2000-yr sediment record in Finland. The relationships between measured and inferred water levels and P/L ratios were significant in the dataset, implying that littoral taxa are primarily deposited in shallow littoral areas, while planktonic cladocerans accumulate abundantly mainly in deepwater locations. The 2000-yr water-level reconstructions based on the water-level inference model and P/L ratio corresponded closely with each other and with a previously available midge-inferred water-level reconstruction from the same core, showing a period of lower water level around AD 300–1000 and suggesting that the methods are valid for paleolimnological and -climatological use.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 2835
Author(s):  
Karina Nielsen ◽  
Ole Baltazar Andersen ◽  
Heidi Ranndal

Satellite altimetry is an important contributor for measuring the water level of continental water bodies. The technique has been applied for almost three decades. In this period the data quality has increased and the applications have evolved from the study of a few large lakes and rivers, to near global applications at various scales. Products from current satellite altimetry missions should be validated to continuously improve the measurements. Sentinel-3A has been operating since 2016 and is the first mission operating in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode globally. Here we evaluate its performance in capturing lake level variations based on a physical and an empirical retracker provided in the official level 2 product. The validation is performed for more than 100 lakes in the United States and Canada where the altimetry based water levels are compared with in situ data. As validation measures we consider the root mean squared error, the Pearson correlation, and the percentage of outliers. For the US sites the median of the RMSE value is 25 cm and 19 cm and the median of the Pearson correlations are 0.86 and 0.93 for the physical and empirical retracker, respectively. The percentage of outliers (median) is 11% for both retrackers. The validations measures are slightly poorer for the Canadian sites; the median RMSE is approximately 5 cm larger, the Pearson correlation 0.1 lower, and the percentage of outliers 5% larger. The poorer performance for the Canadian sites is mainly related to the presence of lake ice in the winter period where the surface elevations are not able to map the surface correctly. The validation measures improve considerably when evaluated for summer data only. For both areas we show that the reconstruction of the water level variations based on the empirical retracker is significantly better compared to that of the physical retracker in terms of the RMSE and the Pearson correlation.


Entropy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Sendrowski ◽  
Kazi Sadid ◽  
Ehab Meselhe ◽  
Wayne Wagner ◽  
David Mohrig ◽  
...  

The validation of numerical models is an important component of modeling to ensure reliability of model outputs under prescribed conditions. In river deltas, robust validation of models is paramount given that models are used to forecast land change and to track water, solid, and solute transport through the deltaic network. We propose using transfer entropy (TE) to validate model results. TE quantifies the information transferred between variables in terms of strength, timescale, and direction. Using water level data collected in the distributary channels and inter-channel islands of Wax Lake Delta, Louisiana, USA, along with modeled water level data generated for the same locations using Delft3D, we assess how well couplings between external drivers (river discharge, tides, wind) and modeled water levels reproduce the observed data couplings. We perform this operation through time using ten-day windows. Modeled and observed couplings compare well; their differences reflect the spatial parameterization of wind and roughness in the model, which prevents the model from capturing high frequency fluctuations of water level. The model captures couplings better in channels than on islands, suggesting that mechanisms of channel-island connectivity are not fully represented in the model. Overall, TE serves as an additional validation tool to quantify the couplings of the system of interest at multiple spatial and temporal scales.


1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (8) ◽  
pp. 1175-1183 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Flint ◽  
R. W. Dalrymple ◽  
J. J. Flint

The sequence of units (from the base up) in the Sixteen Mile Creek lagoon (Lake Ontario) mimics the longitudinal sequence of surficial environments: pink silt—overbank (flood plain – dry marsh); bottom sand—stream channel and beach; orange silt—marsh; gyttja—wet marsh and very shallow (deltaic) lagoon; and brown and grey clay—open-water lagoon. This entire sequence accumulated over the last 4200 years under slowly deepening, transgressive conditions caused by the isostatic rise of the lake outlet. Land clearing by European settlers dramatically increased the supply of clastic sediment and terminated the deposition of the organic-rich silty clays (gyttja) that make up most of the lagoon fill.Because the gyttja and beach sand are interpreted to have accumulated in water depths of less than 0.5 m, the elevation–time plot of 14C dates from these units can be used to reconstruct a very closely constrained lake-level curve. The data indicate that water levels have risen at an average rate of 0.25 cm/a over the last 3300 years as a result of differential, isostatic rebound. Superimposed on this trend are water-level oscillations with amplitudes on the order of 1 m and periods of several hundred years. These oscillations are synchronous and in phase with water-level fluctuations in Lake Michigan, and with a variety of other climatic variations in North America and Europe. We propose, therefore, that the water-level oscillations are a result of long-term, climatically produced variations in precipitation in the Great Lakes drainage basin.


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