Abstract
Due to global climate change, population growth and an ever increasing
demand for fresh water, monitoring groundwater changes over large areas
becomes very important. Current groundwater monitoring still heavily
depends on groundwater head data that are often not available for large
parts of the non-western world. Consequently, groundwater assessment,
especially for large areas comprising several aquifers and basins, is
very complex and not very accurate. The main research question of this
study is to check whether optical, microwave and thermal remote sensing
signals carry information on groundwater levels. The advantage of remote
sensing data is that it provides synoptic overview of semi-quantitative
maps of surface properties, such as vegetation, surface temperature, and
soil moisture signals, where we seek the relation with shallow
groundwater tables. In this study, we analyze and compare groundwater
head measurement data and various remote sensing signals. Our datasets
comprise over 5000 groundwater head measurement points in the
Rhine-Meuse basin. These groundwater head data are compared to the
signals of soil moisture (AMSR-E and ERS), thermal (MODIS land surface
temperature) and vegetation (MODIS NDVI, LAI and FPAR). We investigated
the correlation among these variables by performing straightforward
statistical analyses, such as scatter-plots, multiple regression
techniques and analyses of temporal variability between the variables.
Results show that particularly the soil moisture demonstrates
significant relations with groundwater depth, specifically for shallow
water table depths and areas with sparse vegetation. We argue that
remote sensing signals should be considered as important information for
groundwater assessment in data-poor environments.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages | H21D-1077 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2010 |
Event | American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2010 - San Francisco, USA Duration: 1 Jan 2010 → … |
Conference
Conference | American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2010 |
---|---|
City | San Francisco, USA |
Period | 1/01/10 → … |
Keywords
- [1829] HYDROLOGY / Groundwater hydrology
- [1855] HYDROLOGY / Remote sensing
- [1866] HYDROLOGY / Soil moisture