Dynamics Change of Honghu Lake's Water Surface Area and Its Driving Force Analysis Based on Remote Sensing Technique and TOPMODEL model

Abstract

Honghu Lake is the largest freshwater lake in the Hubei Province of China. This paper introduces a remote sensing approach to monitor the lake's water surface area dynamics over the last 40 years by using multi-temporal remote sensing imagery including Landsat and HJ-1. Meanwhile, the daily precipitation and evaporation data provided by Honghu meteorological station since 1970s were also collected and used to analyze the influence of climate change factors. The typical situation for precipitation was selected as an input into the TOPMODEL model to simulate the hydrological process in Honghu Lake. The simulation result with the water surface area extracted from remote sensing imagery was analyzed. This experiment shows the precipitation and timing of precipitation effects changes in the lake with remote sensing data and it showed the potential of using TOPMODEL model to analyze the combined hydrological process in Honghu Lake.