Abstract
Despite lakes being a key part of the global water cycle and a crucial water resource, there is limited understanding of whether regional or lake-specific factors control water storage variations in small lakes. Here, we study groups of small, unregulated lakes in North Carolina, Washington, Illinois, and Wisconsin, USA using lake level measurements gathered by citizen scientists and lake surface area measurements from optical satellite imagery. We show the lake level measurements to be highly accurate when compared to automated gauges (mean absolute error = 1.6 cm). We compare variations in lake water storage between pairs of lakes within these four states. On average, water storage variations in lake pairs across all study regions are moderately positively correlated (ρ = 0.49) with substantial spread in the degree of correlation. The distance between lake pairs and the extent to which their changes in volume are correlated show a weak but statistically significant negative relationship. Our results indicate that, on regional scales, distance is not a primary factor governing lake water storage patterns, which suggests that other, perhaps lakes-specific, factors must also play important roles.
Highlights
First and foremost, this study demonstrates that two still-evolving approaches, citizen science and optical remote sensing of lake area, can be combined to accurately monitor changes in lake water storage over time
Citizen science lake level data are nearly as accurate as pressure transducer data, with the primary difference being that the pressure transducer data capture a near-continuous time series
The lake surface areas automatically calculated from Landsat and Sentinel 2 imagery are quite similar to the areas manually calculated from Planet imagery in most cases
Summary
In addition to supporting human activities, lakes sustain diverse ecosystems important for many natural processes. Lakes encompass geographically diverse areas, are the lowest points in their surrounding landscapes, serve as records of past hydrologic and geologic events, and regulate surrounding climate. Because they integrate so many processes, lakes and reservoirs act as sentinels of climate change and are among the areas most threatened by climate change and other human impacts [1,2,3,4]. Studying lake levels allows us to better understand the effects of climate change on the water cycle and lake ecosystems [2,3]
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