Identifying Trends in Differences between Inland Lake Surface Water and Surrounding Land Temperature Using a Bayesian Framework
Abstract
Lake ecosystems are important to humans, and they also help tell the story of climate change from nature's perspective. Studies have found that lakes are great sentinels of climate change because they are sensitive to even small changes in climate and are present in diverse geographic locations. Due to its contact with the atmosphere, lake surface water temperature in particular reflects changes in climate. Studies have found that remote sensing observations of radiation emitted from the Earth's surface collected by satellites can be used to calculate lake surface water temperatures, increasing long-term climate study feasibility and potential. However, there are still few studies using remote sensing data to relate surface water temperature with lake changes. Here we used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) product from the Aqua satellite from June 2002 to May 2018 to determine the lake characteristics that explain trends in differences between lake surface water temperature and surrounding land temperature for 95 lakes in the United States. We used a linear Bayesian regression model to estimate trend differences and further identified lake type (i.e. human-made or natural) and change in lake surface area (i.e. shrinking, growing, neutral, or dynamic) as significant predictors of change in temperature differences between surrounding land and surface water temperature. Since lake processes are linked to water temperature, this analysis suggests that combined terrestrial and aquatic remote sensing could be used to identify lakes undergoing water loss or other environmental challenges across a broad spatial scale.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.B21I2446D
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0470 Nutrients and nutrient cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1879 Watershed;
- HYDROLOGY