Abstract
The availability and variations of continental water
storage are of great importance for society, as they
influence agricultural, industrial, and domestic water
use. Among the water storage components, terrestrial
surface water specifically lakes and reservoirs are
essential for wildlife and human habitats as they store
freshwater in the most accessible way, control seasonal
floods and generate hydropower. Despite the
importance, the estimation of surface water storage
variation at a global scale is usually obtained from
simplified models due to the absence of necessary
gauge and remote sensing measurements.
In this study, we produce monthly water volume
anomaly time series of 182260 global lakes and
reservoirs larger than 1 km² for 1985-2018. To do so,
water area time series of lakes and reservoirs are
obtained from the Joint Research Center Global Surface
Water data set. We gather all publicly available in situ
water level time series and generate water level time
series using satellite altimetry data from various
missions and data sets. For the remaining lakes and
reservoirs, water height information is extracted from
the TerraSAR-X digital elevation model.
After collecting the required data, first, the empirical
water area-level model is developed for each object and
then the water volume variation time series are
estimated. With this data set, we can investigate the
temporal and spatial variations of surface water stored
in lakes and reservoirs from 1985-2018 on a global
scale. This study aims to answer these fundamental
questions: 1) What are the temporal behaviors of
surface water volume variations in different river
basins? 2) Does water volume variation trend agree
with other hydrological parameters’ temporal variation,
And 3) what are the major natural and anthropogenic
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factors that explain the long-term water volume
variation?
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