Mapping groundwater storage variations with GRACE: a case study in Alberta, Canada

Abstract

The applicability of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) to adequately represent broad-scale patterns of groundwater storage (GWS) variations and observed trends in groundwater-monitoring well levels (GWWL) is examined in the Canadian province of Alberta. GWS variations are derived over Alberta for the period 2002-2014 using the Release 05 (RL05) monthly GRACE gravity models and the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) land-surface models. Twelve mean monthly GWS variation maps are generated from the 139 monthly GWS variation grids to characterize the annual GWS variation pattern. These maps show that, overall, GWS increases from February to June, and decreases from July to October, and slightly increases from November to December. For 2002-2014, the GWS showed a positive trend which increases from west to east with a mean value of 12 mm/year over the province. The resulting GWS variations are validated using GWWLs in the province. For the purpose of validation, a GRACE total water storage (TWS)-based correlation criterion is introduced to identify groundwater wells which adequately represent the regional GWS variations. GWWLs at 36 wells were found to correlate with both the GRACE TWS and GWS variations. A factor f is defined to up-scale the GWWL variations at the identified wells to the GRACE-scale GWS variations. It is concluded that the GWS variations can be mapped by GRACE and the GLDAS models in some situations, thus demonstrating the conditions where GWS variations can be detected by GRACE in Alberta.

Monitoring Groundwater Storage Changes in the Loess Plateau Using GRACE Satellite Gravity Data, Hydrological Models and Coal Mining Data

“…In recent years, there have been many studies of the retrieval of groundwater changes in different regions using the GRACE satellite gravity data and hydrological models. These studies have been performed in areas including the Mississippi River basin [8], Northern India [9,10], the Mid-Atlantic Region [11], East Africa [12], the Indus Basin in Pakistan [13], the Tibetan Plateau [14], the Three Gorges Reservoir of China [15], the North China Plain [2,16], Alberta in Canada [17], the whole area of Jordan [18], and other regions [19][20][21]. These studies found good correspondence between GWS changes from GRACE and situ GWS changes from monitoring wells, which indicate that GRACE shows great potential for monitoring large-scale GWS changes.…”

Using digital technologies to improve the design and enforcement of public policies

“…Much before the current digital revolution, there has been a long record of using remote sensing technologies to address this challenge, going back at least to the launch of Landsat-1 (then called Earth Resources Technology Satellite) in 1972, followed more recently by the era of Earth Observing Systems (EOS) with the launch of the Terra satellite in 1999 (Melesse et al, 2007). Remote sensing has been extensively used to monitor, among other things, the status of forest resources (Lefsky et al, 2002), larger mammals and birds in open habitats (Leyequien et al, 2007), capture fisheries (Santos, 2000), and ground water resources (Huang et al, 2016). Another example, at a more local level, is the detection via remote sensing of increased turbidity in the Northern Poyang Lake, the People's Republic of China (hereafter "China"), which resulted in a ban on sand mining (Wu et al, 2007;de Leeuw, 2010).…”

Estimating long-term groundwater storage and its controlling factors in Alberta, Canada

“…Estimates of groundwater storage using the remote sensing have been performed around the globe (Swenson et al, 2006;Rodell et al, 2007Rodell et al, , 2009Strassberg et al, 2007;Tiwari et al, 2009;Scanlon et al, 2012;Shamsudduha et al, 2012;Voss et al, 2013;Bhanja et al, 2014Bhanja et al, , 2016Bhanja et al, , 2017bBhanja et al, , 2018Richey et al, 2015;Panda and Wahr, 2016;Chen et al, 2016;. Huang et al (2016) used remote-sensing data for computing the groundwater storage anomalies (GWSAs) in order to estimate groundwater storage in Alberta. They used groundwater levels (GWLs) at 36 wells, mostly confined to the southern Alberta region, and were correlated with both the GRACE terrestrial water storage (TWS) and groundwater storage variations.…”