Monitoring variations in lake water storage with satellite imagery and citizen science

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  • Little, S.
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geological Sciences
  • Pavelsky, T.M.
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geological Sciences
  • Hossain, F.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Washington
  • Ghafoor, S.
    • Other Affiliation: Tennessee Tech University
  • Parkins, G.M.
    • Affiliation: UNC Institute for the Environment
  • Yelton, S.K.
    • Affiliation: UNC Institute for the Environment
  • Rodgers, M.
    • Affiliation: UNC Institute for the Environment
  • Yang, X.
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geological Sciences
  • Crétaux, J.
    • Other Affiliation: Université de Toulouse
  • Hein, C.
  • Ullah, M.A.
    • Other Affiliation: Tennessee Tech University
  • Lina, D.H.
    • Other Affiliation: Tennessee Tech University
  • Thiede, H.
  • Kelly, D.
  • Wilson, D.
  • Topp, S.N.
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geological Sciences
Abstract
  • Despite lakes being a key part of the global water cycle and a crucial water resource, there is limited understanding of whether regional or lake‐specific factors control water storage variations in small lakes. Here, we study groups of small, unregulated lakes in North Carolina, Washington, Illinois, and Wisconsin, USA using lake level measurements gathered by citizen scientists and lake surface area measurements from optical satellite imagery. We show the lake level measurements to be highly accurate when compared to automated gauges (mean absolute error = 1.6 cm). We compare variations in lake water storage between pairs of lakes within these four states. On average, water storage variations in lake pairs across all study regions are moderately positively correlated (ρ = 0.49) with substantial spread in the degree of correlation. The distance between lake pairs and the extent to which their changes in volume are correlated show a weak but statistically significant negative relationship. Our results indicate that, on regional scales, distance is not a primary factor governing lake water storage patterns, which suggests that other, perhaps lakes‐specific, factors must also play important roles.
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  • Article
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  • In Copyright
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  • Attribution 4.0 International
Journal title
  • Water (Switzerland)
Journal volume
  • 13
Journal issue
  • 7
Language
  • English
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  • Publisher
ISSN
  • 2073-4441
Publisher
  • MDPI AG

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