Temporal-Spatial Evolution Analysis of Lake Size-Distribution in the Middle and Lower Yangtze River Basin Using Landsat Imagery Data

Lin Li,Hui Xia,Zheng Li,Zhijun Zhang

doi:10.3390/rs70810364

Abstract

Four natural lakes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River—Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake, Chaohu Lake and Taihu Lake—play a key role in the climate, environment, and ecology of this area. Upstream of these lakes, the Three Gorges Dam Project has been storing water for 12 years. Future monitoring and management of rivers and lakes can certainly benefit from research on the patterns of variation of natural lakes downstream of the Three Gorges Project. This research applies Landsat TM/ETM data to evaluate water area changes in the four lakes from 2002 to 2013. The water area is estimated using AWEI (Automated Water Extraction Index) from satellite images. The average areas decreased respectively 452, 11, and 5 km2 (29.6%, 1.4% and 0.2%) from 2002 to 2013 for Dongting, Chaohu, and Taihu Lakes. Meanwhile, it increased 300 km2 (11.0%) for Poyang Lake. Precipitation and changes in river inflow may account for the fluctuation in the surface area to a large degree, especially between 2009 and 2013. The present study was undertaken to characterize the evolution of lakes and to explore the potential driving force of variation in order to assist the management of dams upstream in the river basin.

Highlights

Lakes contain abundant freshwater, agricultural and aquatic products, minerals, and other resources and play an important role in natural cycles, climate regulation, and ecological balance [1,2].Under the influence of LUCC (Land-Use and Land-Cover Change) and other forms of environmental change, surface water, as one of the most important resources on Earth, has undergone constant temporal and spatial evolution
By calculating the anomalies of water areas from 2002 to 2013 [40], this study shows that the anomaly in Dongting Lake area declined from 2002 to 2013, even as the anomaly fluctuated considerably over that time
This indicates that Poyang Lake might have different size change trends from Dongting Lake, they are very similar in morphology

Summary

Introduction

Lakes contain abundant freshwater, agricultural and aquatic products, minerals, and other resources and play an important role in natural cycles, climate regulation, and ecological balance [1,2].Under the influence of LUCC (Land-Use and Land-Cover Change) and other forms of environmental change, surface water, as one of the most important resources on Earth, has undergone constant temporal and spatial evolution. The impacts of surface water evolution on ecology, society, health and the economy have been topics of a large number of academic studies [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. MODIS image data were used to monitor and analyze the changes in the inundated area of Poyang Lake over 11 years [18], and a near real-time water surface detection method based on MODIS data was developed and tested to be applied to other existing or scheduled sensors with similar bands [19]. Researchers analyzed different periods of volume change and built underwater terrain models of the Baiyangdian wetland using multiple Landsat and HJ-1A/B images, and CCD images combined with water levels from the hydrological station in Hebei province, China [20]

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Conclusion