Remote Sensing of Surface Water Dynamics Between 2015 and 2020 in the Prairie Pothole Region  [* Cross-Reference *]

The approach was applied to a prairie catchment in North Dakota. Total water area, number of water bodies and median area per water body were computed from the time series of water extent maps. Surface water dynamics showed strong seasonal dynamics especially in the case of small water bodies (< 1 ha) with a decrease in water area and number of small water bodies from spring throughout summer when evaporation rates in the PPR are typically high.

Larger water bodies showed a more stable behaviour during most years. Inter-annual dynamics were strongly related to drought indices based on climate data, such as the Palmer Drought Severity Index. During the extremely wet period of late 2019 to 2020, the dynamics of both small and large water bodies changed markedly.

While a larger number of small water bodies was encountered, which remained stable throughout the wet period, also the area of larger water bodies increased, partly due to merging of smaller adjacent water bodies. The results demonstrate the potential of Sentinel-1 data for long-term monitoring of prairie wetlands while limitations exist due to the rather low temporal resolution of 12 days over the PPR.</p> ***This entry has been automatically imported via OpenAlex by LIST harvest scripts.

Please refer to doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8737 for the original and latest version of the publication***