Evaluation of the temporal variations of groundwater storage and its
interactions with climatic variables using remotely sensed data
Abstract
Monitoring of the fluctuations of groundwater storage is particularly
important in arid and semi-arid regions where water scarcity brings
about various challenges. Remote sensing data and techniques play a
preponderant role in developing solutions to environmental problems.
Emergence of GRACE satellites have eased the remote monitoring and
evaluation of groundwater resources with an unprecedented precision over
large scales. Within the scope of the current study, the latest release
of GRACE Mascon’s dataset as well as GLDAS models of Noah and CLSM were
integrated to extract groundwater storage anomalies (GWSA) over Turkey.
The temporal interactions of the estimated GWSA with the climatic
variables of precipitation and temperature (derived from the reanalysis
datasets of CHELSA and FLDAS, respectively) were investigated
statistically. The results suggest the there is a descending trend for
TWSA and GWSA over Turkey with a total loss of 11 and 6 cm respectively.
The statistical analysis results also indicate that the monthly
variations of GWS over Turkey are highly correlated with precipitation
and temperature at 2-month lag. The analysis of the climatology
(long-term) values of monthly GWSA, precipitation and temperature also
revealed high agreement between the variables.