Wolkite University

College of Engineering and Technology

Hydraulic and Water Resources Engineering Department

Title: Quantifying Lake Dynamics: Detecting Changes in Water

Level and Surface Area Using Remote Sensing Techniques, Case
Study of Arekit Lake, Gurage Zone

Thematic Area:
Theme 5: National Resources Management and Biodiversity Conservation
Sub-theme 2: National parks, Endogenous Plant and Animals, and Water Bodies
Sub-theme 3: Environment, Bioremediation
Sub-theme 4: Water Resources

Thematic Research Proposal By:

Dr.Bedassa Dessalegn (PhD)
Mr.Girma Bekele (MSc)
November, 2023
Wolkite, Ethiopia
 Outlines
 Introduction
 Background
 Research Objective
 Statement of Problem
 Methodology
 Expected Output
 Work Plan
 Budget Summary

2
 Introduction
 Remote sensing (RS) approaches are crucial for detecting
long-term lake dynamics.
 RS synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscatter from lakes
exhibits annual variation due to climate variations.
 When the lake is not frozen, the challenge in estimating lake surface
area (LSA) is the variability in backscatter caused by lake surface
roughness due to wind-induced.
 In the freeze-up period, the lake surface ice causes a challenge to
distinguish water and land, since SAR backscatter from ice can
exhibit very similar intensities to that from the surrounding land.

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 Cont...
 Additional factor for monitoring lakes with SAR during;
 Winter season (lake frozen, or snow cover) can results greater radar
backscatter
 Spring (snowmelt or wet snow) makes it challenging to distinguish
the lake edge since SAR backscatter from wet snow on land and lake
are very low, thus giving poor contrast between the surface types.
 A few studies have attempted on detection of LSA during this
challenging season, and interpretation of SAR requires a
greater degree of care to extract accurate information.

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 Cont...
 The study will involves the following:
 Uses SAR images RS to detect lake water level (LWL) and LSA
 Consider large SAR dataset in terms of;
• Number of images and period of time covered,
• Consistency of the method over many seasons of data and across a range of
sensor resolutions
 Develop processing chain of SAR image that used on any lake as
well as capable of recognizing the LSA of Arekit Lake.
 Develop the relationship between in-situ LWL and estimated LSA
 Evaluate the accuracy of SAR for LSA and LWL estimates.

5
 Background
 Quantifying changes in LWL and LSA are important for:
 Understanding hydrological processes
 Assessing water resources
 Designing water resource projects
 Assessing water resource potential, and
 Monitoring environmental changes
 RS approaches are emerged as powerful tools:
 For detecting and monitoring lake dynamics over a large spatial and
temporal extents.
 To provide valuable data on LWL and LSA, which helps decision-
makers.

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 Cont...
 RS approaches are more advantages than ground-based monitoring
methods.
• It offer repeatable measurements, and assess temporal variations in lake
dynamics
 RS provides a synoptic view (simultaneous observation of multiple
lakes across vast areas).
• This broad coverage enables the identification of regional patterns and
trends, and
• Provide a comprehensive understanding of hydrological dynamics.

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 Cont...
 Some of RS techniques used for detecting lake dynamics are;
 Synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
 Optical remote sensing
 Light detection and ranging (LiDAR)
 Thermal remote sensing
 Satellite-based altimetry, and
 Multispectral/hyperspectral imaging

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 Cont...
• SAR provides high-resolution imagery that capture detailed information of
LWL and LSA
• Optical remote sensing enables the analysis of water reflectance and
shoreline changes
• LiDAR offers accurate elevation models to assess water surface variations
• Thermal helps identify temperature-related changes in LWL
• Altimeters measure the distance between the satellite and water's surface
using laser, which allows to measure the LWL
• Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging provide insights into water quality
parameters

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 Statement of Problem
 Understanding lake's characteristics, utilization, and potential
impacts are important;
 To develop effective strategies for sustainable management and
policy-makers.
 Lack of quantitative scientific information on Arekit Lake
dynamics poses a significant problem on its;
• Utilization, management, decision-making processes, etc.
 Filling this gap is paramount to ensure;
• Utilization and conservation of Lake Arekit,
• Ultimate safeguard of its ecological integrity and the well-being of the
surrounding community.

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 Research Objectives
 General objective
 Detecting lake dynamics through quantifying lake water level and
surface area changes using remote sensing techniques.
 Specific objectives
 Assessing in-situ measured lake dynamics like water level
 Identifying and analyzing drivers and causes of lake level and
surface area changes
 Exploring long-term trends and variations in lake water levels and
surface area

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 Methodology
 Data
 SAR remote sensing approach
• SAR remote sensing (Envisat ASAR, RADARSAT-2, and Sentinel-
1A and B) is considered
• Due to ice cover and wind, other SAR datasets lead to poor contrast
between the lake and the surrounding land and erroneous
classifications.
 In-situ lake water level (LWL)
• Helps to derive regression equation between LSA and the in-situ
LWL.

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 Cont...
 Digital elevation model (DEM)
• Terrain correction is applied to the SAR images using DEM
• Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) version type of DEM is used
 Climate data
 Response on soil degradation, expansion of agriculture and grazing
land, etc., at Arekit Lake
 Software
 Generic Synthetic Aperture Radar (GSAR)
 ArcGIS

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 Cont...
 Data processing
 Steps of geocoding SAR images using GSAR software is as follows:
a. Calibration using an annotated lookup table from Ground Range Detected
(GRD) high resolution product
b. Multi-looking and pixels averaging to suppress speckle
c. Mapping the selected Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)-projected output
grid to the radar coordinates using DEM
d. Projection of the backscatter product to the output grid using the radar
coordinate mapping and cubic interpolation
 Geocoding generates mask files for radar shadow and layover
 Small portions of the lake are affected by layover/shadow.
• Imaging geometries in the multi-temporal post-processing avoid this
problem.

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 Cont...
 A flow diagram of processing of SAR from geocoding images to final temporal LSA

L1B image Start

archive

K-means Layover/shadow Minimum/maximum

clustering correction masking area
Geocoded Dataset reclassified
VV, VH, Classified Corrected
images images and labeled-unfiltered
radar mask LSA time series
images
Outlier filtering
Regression equation
Extracting LSA LWL time
time series series

End Calculating accuracy

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assessment
 Cont...
 Maximum area water mask is applied to each images;
• To reduce the image area to be segmented and reduce computational time.
 Morphological dilation filter is considered to the mask;
• To increase the proportion of surrounding land area
• To ensure as enough water and non-water pixels is confined within the lake
mask.
 After the implementation of masking;
• K-means clustering is applied to segment the unmasked part of the image.
 Once the entire dataset are segmented;
• Post-processing and correcting the segmented images is the next step.
 Multi-temporal method is used to correct the pixels which is;
• Unclassified due to areas of radar shadow/layover or incomplete coverage

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 Cont...
 Minimum area mask is applied to each image;
• To correct misclassifications due to wind or snow/ice at the lake surface.
 Correcting these effects increases the use of a greater proportion of
the dataset instead of discarding poor classifications.
 This mask area is determined through mapping all pixels that are
classified as water that mostly present in all June images.
 The area continually updated to take into account that the minimum
area in June during one year is not a representative for other years
• This corrects misclassified pixels occurring within the center of the lake due
to wind or other factors that increase surface roughness and/or backscatter.

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 Cont...
 Minimum water mask area is utilized for summer and winter images
• For winter classifications pixels classified into class 1 or class 2 (mixed
backscatter),
• Reset all class 2 pixels to class 1 if they are contained within the minimum
mask; if class 2 pixels is outside of this mask belong to the land class.
 The difference between summer and winter images is that;
• Pixels with class 3 occurring within the minimum area always remain as
class 3 in winter images, whereas in summer images always be reclassified
to 1.
 After these corrections, a detected water mask is constructed by;
• Choosing only the lowest class and median filter to remove any remaining
areas of speckle.
 The final water mask is used to calculate the LSA.

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 Expected Output
 Quantitative lake dynamics on LWL and LSA
 Long-term temporal trends of lake dynamics
 Relationship between in-situ LWL and LSA of SAR remote
sensing
 Evaluation for the accuracy of SAR remote sensing
 Summary of key insights and implications of the quantified
lake dynamics
 Suggestion on management strategies, monitoring approaches
 Further research needed to address the identified changes and
support sustainable lake management.

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 Work Plan
S.N Tentative time frame
Job breakdown Nov- Feb- Jun-
Jan Apr Jul
1 Literature reviewing
2 Remote sensing (RS) data analysis
3 In-situ data collection and analysis
4 Processing RS image
5 Extracting LSA
6 Analyzing drivers of lake dynamics
7 Quantifying LWL
8 Developing the relationship of LSA with LWL
and validating the results
9 Organizing the all research document and
submitting

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 Budget Summary
S.
Main Activity
No
1 Data collection
Field data collection of lake
water level and surface area
Secondary data collection
2 Data quality assessment
3 Spatial data analysis
Office work (model
4 Researchers
simulation) and verification
5 Analysis and documentation
Total
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Cost
Description of activity Participant
(ETB)
• Bench mark determination and pointing
measurement coordinates
• In-situ measurement
• Interview and team discussion with Researchers 350000
selected stakeholders and elders.
• The general condition of station
• Historical data collection Researchers 75000
•Evaluating data quality Researchers 35000
• Spatial model purchase and simulation Researchers 25000
• Integrating spatial model output with
15000
WMO standards
• Validating model output and
optimizing model output considering Researchers 12000
climate and financial factors
500000
Thank You !!!!