Monitoring groundwater change in california’s central valley using sentinel-1 and grace observations

Zhen Liu; Pang Wei Liu; Elias Massoud; Tom G. Farr; Paul Lundgren; James S. Famiglietti

doi:10.3390/geosciences9100436

Monitoring groundwater change in california’s central valley using sentinel-1 and grace observations

Zhen Liu, Pang Wei Liu, Elias Massoud, Tom G. Farr, Paul Lundgren, James S. Famiglietti

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

49 Scopus citations

Abstract

The San Joaquin Valley and Tulare basins in California’s Central Valley have intensive agricultural activity and groundwater demand that has caused significant subsidence and depletion of water resources in the past. We measured groundwater pumping-induced land subsidence in the southern Central Valley from March 2015 to May 2017 using Sentinel-1 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data. The InSAR measurements provided fine spatial details of subsidence patterns and displayed a superposition of secular and seasonal variations that were coherent across our study region and correlated with precipitation variability and changes in freshwater demand. Combining InSAR and Global Positioning System (GPS) data, precipitation, and in situ well records showed a broad scale slowdown/cessation of long term subsidence in the wetter winter of 2017, likely reflecting the collective response of the Central Valley aquifer system to heavier-than-usual precipitation. We observed a very good temporal correlation between the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite groundwater anomaly (GWA) variation and long-term subsidence records, regardless of local hydrogeology and mechanical properties. This indicates the subsidence from satellite geodesy is a very useful indicator for tracking groundwater storage change. With the continuing acquisition of Sentinel-1 and other satellites, we anticipate decadal-scale subsidence records with a spatial resolution of tens to hundreds of meters will be available in the near future to be combined with basin-averaged GRACE measurements to improve our estimate of time-varying groundwater change. View Full-Text.

Original language	English
Article number	436
Journal	Geosciences (Switzerland)
Volume	9
Issue number	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences9100436
State	Published - Oct 2019
Externally published	Yes

Funding

The research described in this paper was performed under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and was also partly funded by the CA Department of Water Resources. Funding: The research described in this paper was performed under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and was also partly funded by the CA Department of Water Resources.

Funders	Funder number
CA Department of Water Resources
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Department of Water Resources
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology

Keywords

GRACE
Groundwater change
Remote sensing
Satellite InSAR
Subsidence

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10.3390/geosciences9100436

Cite this

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title = "Monitoring groundwater change in california{\textquoteright}s central valley using sentinel-1 and grace observations",

abstract = "The San Joaquin Valley and Tulare basins in California{\textquoteright}s Central Valley have intensive agricultural activity and groundwater demand that has caused significant subsidence and depletion of water resources in the past. We measured groundwater pumping-induced land subsidence in the southern Central Valley from March 2015 to May 2017 using Sentinel-1 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data. The InSAR measurements provided fine spatial details of subsidence patterns and displayed a superposition of secular and seasonal variations that were coherent across our study region and correlated with precipitation variability and changes in freshwater demand. Combining InSAR and Global Positioning System (GPS) data, precipitation, and in situ well records showed a broad scale slowdown/cessation of long term subsidence in the wetter winter of 2017, likely reflecting the collective response of the Central Valley aquifer system to heavier-than-usual precipitation. We observed a very good temporal correlation between the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite groundwater anomaly (GWA) variation and long-term subsidence records, regardless of local hydrogeology and mechanical properties. This indicates the subsidence from satellite geodesy is a very useful indicator for tracking groundwater storage change. With the continuing acquisition of Sentinel-1 and other satellites, we anticipate decadal-scale subsidence records with a spatial resolution of tens to hundreds of meters will be available in the near future to be combined with basin-averaged GRACE measurements to improve our estimate of time-varying groundwater change. View Full-Text.",

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AB - The San Joaquin Valley and Tulare basins in California’s Central Valley have intensive agricultural activity and groundwater demand that has caused significant subsidence and depletion of water resources in the past. We measured groundwater pumping-induced land subsidence in the southern Central Valley from March 2015 to May 2017 using Sentinel-1 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data. The InSAR measurements provided fine spatial details of subsidence patterns and displayed a superposition of secular and seasonal variations that were coherent across our study region and correlated with precipitation variability and changes in freshwater demand. Combining InSAR and Global Positioning System (GPS) data, precipitation, and in situ well records showed a broad scale slowdown/cessation of long term subsidence in the wetter winter of 2017, likely reflecting the collective response of the Central Valley aquifer system to heavier-than-usual precipitation. We observed a very good temporal correlation between the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite groundwater anomaly (GWA) variation and long-term subsidence records, regardless of local hydrogeology and mechanical properties. This indicates the subsidence from satellite geodesy is a very useful indicator for tracking groundwater storage change. With the continuing acquisition of Sentinel-1 and other satellites, we anticipate decadal-scale subsidence records with a spatial resolution of tens to hundreds of meters will be available in the near future to be combined with basin-averaged GRACE measurements to improve our estimate of time-varying groundwater change. View Full-Text.

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Monitoring groundwater change in california’s central valley using sentinel-1 and grace observations

Abstract

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Keywords

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