Progress in remote sensing study on lake hydrologic regime

Abstract

As the key component of available freshwater resources, lakes play an important role in all aspects of life and human activities. Influenced by global climate change and human intervention, lakes have been undergoing rapid changes. Thus it is necessary to conduct lasting and accurate investigation of spatial and temporal variations of these lakes, serving better for water resources management and protection, and early warning of future climate change risks. The emergence and development of remote sensing technology provides great opportunity for large-scale and near real-time monitoring of lake dynamics, which overcomes the limitations of field-based investigation of lakes. In this paper, the existing remote sensing technologies and methods of lake monitoring are reviewed, and the progress of remote sensing research in the aspects of lake area extraction, lake level reconstruction, lake water volume/storage variation estimation, etc., are summarizes. This review focuses on the new methods and new technologies employed in recent years. The application prospect of multi-source remote sensing data fusion and cloud computing platform in continuous change monitoring of surface water bodies is also mentioned. Finally, in view of the promising development of remote sensing technology, the application potential and prospective of remote sensing monitoring of lake dynamics in the future are discussed briefly.