Dynamic Waterline Mapping of Inland Great Lakes Using Time-Series SAR Data From GF-3 and S-1A Satellites: A Case Study of DJK Reservoir, China

Abstract

Great inland freshwater lakes play an important role in regulating inland water resources, and the usage of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images for the accurate waterline mapping is an effective technical means to study the dynamic changes of great inland lakes. In this article, the Danjiangkou (DJK) reservoir is selected as a study case, and a novel waterline mapping method with four main parts is proposed to monitor the water area dynamically. First, a coarse segmentation method is implemented to extract the initial waterline. Second, a strategy of division in local regions is given to speed up the subsequent processes. Third, a combination of a speckle filter and an improved geometric active contour model is used for refined segmentation. Finally, a change detection method is used to study the changing lake. Furthermore, six SAR images obtained by the Gaofen-3 (GF-3) and Sentinel-1A (S-1A) satellites in the DJK reservoir, Hongze lake and Poyang lake are tested to verify the universality of the proposed water area extraction method. The results demonstrate excellent performances with an accuracy of over 97% and an average contour offset under 0.7 pixels. Besides, the time-series analysis of the DJK reservoir is applied based on the mapped waterlines of 37 SAR images collected from January to December in 2017. Comparing with the changing tendency of the water level surveyed in the DJK reservoir, the waterline mapping results and the filed survey data have great consistency, which further proves the validity of the proposed method, also presents the significant potential of the GF-3 and S-1A SAR images for managing the water resource.