Comparative assessment of remote sensing-based water dynamic in a dam lake using a combination of Sentinel-2 data and digital elevation model

Monitoring and determining the amount of water in reservoirs is of great importance in terms of water planning and management. This study proposes a geographic information system (GIS)-based methodology to estimate the water volume changes in water reservoirs. Two specific methods are proposed using Australian National University's Digital Elevation Model (ANUDEM) raster surface and Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) surface models, both utilizing normalized difference water index (NDWI) of Sentinel 2A satellite images for water-covered area and coastline and digital elevation model (DEM) for 3D modelling of the reservoir. The most crucial part of this study is the comprehensive evaluation of the model findings considering hydrological, meteorological and anthropogenic factors, simultaneously. Application of the proposed methods is provided for the analysis of the multi-temporal water volume changes of Bayramiç Dam Lake (Çanakkale, Turkey) in two hydrological periods covering the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 water years. The results indicate that the TINS model produced water volume values much closer to the in situ Turkish General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works (DSI) values than the ANUDEM model. The performance of these methods was also assessed by the temporal dynamics of surface hydrological processes. Regarding the water storage dynamics, hydro-meteorological factors influence the water input, while anthropogenic factors strongly influence the water output. Water consumption for irrigation and electricity generation was found to be the most important water budget components of the total water consumption.

Comparison of thresholding methods for shoreline extraction from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 imagery: Extreme Lake Salda, track of Mars on Earth

Lake Salda's extreme environment is geologically similar to Jezero Crater paleolake on Mars due to the formation of stromatolites and its extremely alkaline and cold water. It is critical to accurately determine the shoreline in the littoral zone where stromatolite formation occurs, in alkaline clean lakes like Salda, which contain traces of life on Mars, and in monitoring the change that occurs with climate and anthropogenic effect. The performance of global automatic thresholding algorithms on shoreline determination from NDWI and mNDWI water indices is compared in this study using Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 images atmospherically corrected by different algorithms. Satellite images data acquired on August 12, 2020 for Sentinel-2 and August 11, 2020 for Landsat-8 on Lake Salda were used to determining the shoreline. The shoreline data measured in situ concurrently with the Sentinel-2 satellite acquisition was used as reference data. In the accuracy analysis, ground control points created inside and outside the lake at a distance of 1 pixel and 0.5 pixel to the reference shoreline for each satellite image were used. The performance of the optimal threshold values determined by each thresholding algorithm in the water index images was assessed using Kappa coefficient, Overall Accuracy (OA), %OA of Inside (%OA_inside) and %OA of Outside (%OA_outside) statistics metrics. The optimal threshold values vary depending on the image and the atmospheric correction algorithm applied to the image. The NDWI index produces more accurate results in both Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 satellite images. While atmospheric correction algorithms do not affect the results in Landsat-8 images, the Sen2Cor algorithm outperforms iCOR in Sentinel-2 images. For thresholding algorithms to be used in different water index and satellite images, Intermode, Isodata, IJ_Isodata, Minimum and Otsu algorithms in Landsat-8_LaSRC_NDWI and Landsat-8_iCOR_NDWI images, and Intermode, Minimum and Huang algorithms in Sentinel-2_Sen2Cor_NDWI images produce the best results. Because the Minimum algorithm causes significant gaps in the lake surface, the Huang and Intermode algorithms should be used for Sentinel-2_Sen2Cor_NDWI images. The 0 (zero) threshold value in the water indices images has a high accuracy only in the NDWI water indices generated from the Landsat-8 image.