Monitoring the Fluctuation of Lake Qinghai Using Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

Abstract:The knowledge of water storage variations in ungauged lakes is of fundamental importance to understanding the water balance on the Tibetan Plateau. In this paper, a simple framework was presented to monitor the fluctuation of inland water bodies by the combination of satellite altimetry measurements and optical satellite imagery without any in situ measurements. The fluctuation of water level, surface area, and water storage variations in Lake Qinghai were estimated to demonstrate this framework. Water levels retrieved from ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and and Elevation Satellite) elevation data and lake surface area derived from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) product were fitted by linear regression during the period from 2003 to 2009 when the overpass time for both of them was coincident. Based on this relationship, the time series of water levels from 1999 to 2002 were extended by using the water surface area extracted from Landsat TM/ETM+ images as inputs, and finally the variations of water volume in Lake Qinghai were estimated from 1999 to 2009. The overall errors of water levels retrieved by the simple method in our work were comparable with other globally available test results with r = 0.93, MAE = 0.07 m, and RMSE = 0.09 m. The annual average rate of increase was 0.11 m/yr, which was very close to the results obtained from in situ measurements. High accuracy was obtained in the estimation of surface areas. The MAE and RMSE were only 6 km 2 , and 8 km 2 , respectively, which were even lower than the MAE and RMAE of surface area extracted from Landsat TM images. The estimated water volume variations effectively captured the trend of annual OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2014, 6 10458 variation of Lake Qinghai. Good agreement was achieved between the estimated and measured water volume variations with MAE = 0.4 billion m 3 , and RMSE = 0.5 billion m 3 , which only account for 0.7% of the total water volume of Lake Qinghai. This study demonstrates that it is feasible to monitor comprehensively the fluctuation of large water bodies based entirely on remote sensing data.

Land Cover Change Detection in Urban Lake Areas Using Multi-Temporary Very High Spatial Resolution Aerial Images

“…With the growing of human activity and rapid urbanization, many urban lakes in China have shrunk significantly or disappeared in recent years. Remote sensing, as an advanced technology for Earth observation and an important tool for providing spatially consistent image information, has been widely used in various applications, such as land use/land cover (LULC) change [5,6], disaster monitoring [7], urban sprawl [8], and hydrology [3,9,10]. Especially remote sensing plays an important role in water body monitoring.…”

“…In particular, since the Landsat archive was opened to the public by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2008 [12], Many studies have focused on water change detection, lake monitoring and lakefront land use classification using multi-temporal Landsat images [1,3,4,10,13]. For example, Michishita et al [14] examined the two decades of urbanization in the Poyang Lake area in China using a time-series Landsat-5 TM dataset, and performed a quantification and visualization of the changes in time-series urban land cover fractions through spectral unmixing.…”

“…Song et al [15] estimated the water storage changes in the lakes of the Tibetan Plateau by combining time-series water level and area data derived from optical satellite images over a long time scale, and analyzed the changes therein. W. Zhu et al [3] monitored the fluctuation of Qinghai Lake by estimating the variations of water volume based on MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)/Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images from 1999-2009. J. Zhu [1] quantitatively analyzed the impacts of lakefront land use changes on lake areas in Wuhan, based on two Landsat TM/ETM+ images taken in 1991 and 2005.…”

“…Urban lakes provide precious water to residents, fish and waterfowl, as well as regulate the urban environment, i.e., humidity, temperature, flood storage [1][2][3][4]. With the growing of human activity and rapid urbanization, many urban lakes in China have shrunk significantly or disappeared in recent years.…”

Spatial-Temporal Characteristics and Climatic Responses of Water Level Fluctuations of Global Major Lakes from 2002 to 2010

“…However, the desiccation of lakes, such as the Aral Sea, has severe negative impacts, including the end of commercial fishing industries and the devastation of the floral and faunal biodiversity of the native ecosystems [4]. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the investigation of global lakes and study the characteristics of lake areas and water levels in both time and space [5][6][7].…”