An initial validation of Landsat 5 and 7 derived surface water temperature for U.S. lakes, reservoirs, and estuaries

Abstract

The United States Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research Control Act of 2014 identified the need for forecasting and monitoring harmful algal blooms (HAB) in lakes, reservoirs, and estuaries across the nation. Temperature is a driver in HAB forecasting models that affects both HAB growth rates and toxin production. Therefore, temperature data derived from the U.S. Geological Survey Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus thermal band products were validated across 35 lakes and reservoirs, and 24 estuaries. In situ data from the Water Quality Portal (WQP) were used for validation. The WQP serves data collected by state, federal, and tribal groups. Discrete in situ temperature data included measurements at 11,910 U.S. lakes and reservoirs from 1980 through 2015. Landsat temperature measurements could include 170,240 lakes and reservoirs once an operational product is achieved. The Landsat-derived temperature mean absolute error was 1.34°C in lake pixels >180 m from land, 4.89°C at the land-water boundary, and 1.11°C in estuaries based on comparison against discrete surface in situ measurements. This is the first study to quantify Landsat resolvable U.S. lakes and reservoirs, and large-scale validation of an operational satellite provisional temperature climate data record algorithm. Due to the high performance of open water pixels, Landsat satellite data may supplement traditional in situ sampling by providing data for most U.S. lakes, reservoirs, and estuaries over consistent seasonal intervals (even with cloud cover) for an extended period of record of more than 35 years.

Research Trends in the Use of Remote Sensing for Inland Water Quality Science: Moving Towards Multidisciplinary Applications

“…The Lake Multi-Scaled Geospatial and Temporal Database (LAGOS-NE) provides a similar assimilation of in situ water quality measurements for 17 water-rich states in the upper Midwest and Northeast United States, providing historical field data for over 51,000 lakes and reservoirs [243]. These datasets have already been used as calibration and validation data for remote sensing of water skin temperature [244]. In Europe, national-scale water quality data for inland and coastal waters are compiled from participating agencies into the Waterbase dataset, which is harmonized and made research ready under the WISE system (water information system for Europe) [245].…”

Spatial‐Temporal Variation of Lake Surface Water Temperature and Its Driving Factors in Yunnan‐Guizhou Plateau

“…In the study of LSWT extraction from remote sensing images, Schaeffer et al () extracted the LSWTs from 35 lakes and reservoirs in the United States using Landsat series data, and compared them with the measured data. Results show that, in the lake pixels above 180 m from the land, the mean absolute error of terrestrial satellite temperature measurement is 1.34 °C, the land‐water boundary is 4.89 °C, and the estuary is 1.11 °C.…”

An epilimnion and hypolimnion temperature model based on air temperature and lake characteristics

“…Thanks to their advantages, satellite images have increasingly been used to study the ecology of lakes in recent years (Dörnhöfer and Oppelt, 2016). Satellite data has been used to study the surface temperatures in extended geographical regions, such as France (Prats et al, 2018a), the Tibetan Plateau (Wan et al, 2017), the Arctic Coastal Plane (Huang et al, 2017), the US (Schaeffer et al, 2018) or even at world scale (Schneider and Hook, 2010;Layden et al, 2015). In other cases, satellite images have been used to study internal thermal patterns in lakes (Marti-Cardona et al, 2008;Allan et al, 2016;Woolway and Merchant, 2018), longitudinal surface thermal gradients in reservoirs (Martí-Cardona et al, 2016;Ling et al, 2017) or how lakes respond to meteorological forcing Merchant, 2017,2018).…”