Abstract
Addressing inland water transparency and driver effects to ensure the sustainability and provision of good quality water in Sri Lanka has been a timely prerequisite, especially under the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 agenda. Natural and anthropogenic changes lead to significant variations in water quality in the country. Therefore, an urgent need has emerged to understand the variability, spatiotemporal patterns, changing trends and impact of drivers on transparency, which are unclear to date. This study used all available Landsat 8 images from 2013 to 2020 and a quasi-analytical approach to assess the spatiotemporal Secchi disk depth (ZSD) variability of 550 reservoirs and its relationship with natural (precipitation, wind and temperature) and anthropogenic (human activity and population density) drivers. ZSD varied from 9.68 cm to 199.47 with an average of 64.71 cm and 93% of reservoirs had transparency below 100 cm. Overall, slightly increasing trends were shown in the annual mean ZSD. Notable intra-annual variations were also indicating the highest and lowest ZSD during the north-east monsoon and south-west monsoon, respectively. The highest ZSD was found in wet zone reservoirs, while dry zone showed the least. All of the drivers were significantly affecting the water transparency in the entire island. The combined impact of natural factors on ZSD changes was more significant (77.70%) than anthropogenic variables, whereas, specifically, human activity accounted for the highest variability across all climatic zones. The findings of this study provide the first comprehensive estimation of the ZSD of entire reservoirs and driver contribution and also provides essential information for future sustainable water management and conservation strategies.
Highlights
Inland water is one of the most crucial and limited natural resources that plays a pivotal role in sustaining biodiversity and human society [1,2]
Among the climate factors studied, we have shown that precipitation had the highest significant impact on ZSD variation in the entire country, and that effect was more prevalent in the dry zone reservoirs
This study provided water transparency trends of 550 reservoirs across Sri Lanka from 2013 to 2020 using Landsat 8 OLI images in a semi-analytical approach in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, and the following conclusions could be drawn through the comprehensive analyses of ZSD distribution, trends, and effect of environmental variables at catchment scale of climatic zones of Sri Lanka: 1
Summary
Inland water is one of the most crucial and limited natural resources that plays a pivotal role in sustaining biodiversity and human society [1,2]. Regular observations are vital to assess the impact of surface water variation on the environment. Inland water deterioration is recognised as an emerging issue in Sri. Lanka by the National Action Plan for Haritha (Green) Lanka Programme of 2009–2016 [5]. Water transparency is one of the most common indicators of water quality impairment, and the Secchi disk depth (ZSD ) is a direct representation of the water clarity, often referred to as a proxy for the overall water quality of the waterbody. ZSD indicates water transparency as observed by the human eye and represents the light availability for the benthic ecosystem [6].
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