Developing a Near-Continuous Estimation of Volumetric Fluctuations in Tropical Lakes and Reservoirs Using Satellite Remote Sensing

Lakes and reservoirs play an integral role in water resources management by storing large quantities of water commonly used for irrigation, hydroelectric power, water supply, and flood mitigation. Knowing the exact quantity of stored water and necessary water for each of these usages is a critical component of sustainable water resources management. However, limited amounts of hydrologic data in developing nations, most of which are located in the tropics, hinders the accurate monitoring of water storage and allocation. Recent improvements in remote sensing have greatly enhanced the ability to calculate volumetric fluctuations of lakes and reservoirs at given points through time but are limited by temporal resolution as well as the computational time required for image processing. This study utilizes the newly developed MODISTools package for the programming language R in conjunction with satellite altimetry from three different altimetry databases to estimate lake and reservoir volumes at eight day intervals over a 15 year period. The study specifically examines three large lakes and reservoirs: Balbina Reservoir in the Amazon River Basin, Lake Tana in the Nile River Basin, and Tonle Sap Lake in the Mekong River Basin. Altimetry-based water level estimations are validated by in situ water level data from monitoring stations while surface area estimations are validated by Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR) generated bathymetric maps with corresponding stage-area relationships. Preliminary results indicate that both remotely sensed water levels and surface areas agree well with in situ measurements, supporting the appropriateness of this methodology.