Seasonal level change of global reservoirs (2018-2019) from ICESat-2

Global reservoir level change dataset derived from the second release (Oct 14, 2018 to Nov 16, 2019) of the ICESat-2 L3A Land and Vegetation Height product (ATL08). More details about the ATL08 algorithm can be found in Neuenschwander & Pitts (2019) and the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) for Land and Vegetation Data Products (ATL08) (Neuenschwander et al., 2019). Water surface elevations of known global reservoirs were determined by intersecting the ATL08 product with the Global Reservoir and Dam (GRanD) database v1.3 (http://globaldamwatch.org/grand/) (Lehner et al., 2011). For each reservoir, water surface elevation was computed as the median of along-track ICESat-2 elevation retrievals. We excluded retrievals that were within 100 m of the reservoir shoreline to ensure that only retrievals over water were retained. We also removed spurious water surface elevations by excluding all retrievals that had Z-scores higher than two. Reservoir level change was determined by differencing pairs of water surface elevations in consecutive seasons, defined as winter (December, January, February), spring (March, April, May), summer (June, July, August) and autumn (September, October, November).

Lehner, B., Liermann, C. R., Revenga, C., Vörösmarty, C., Fekete, B., Crouzet, P., et al. (2011). High-resolution mapping of the world’s reservoirs and dams for sustainable river-flow management. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 9(9), 494–502. https://doi.org/10.1890/100125

Neuenschwander, A., & Pitts, K. (2019). The ATL08 land and vegetation product for the ICESat-2 Mission. Remote Sensing of Environment, 221, 247–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2018.11.005

Neuenschwander, A. L., Popescu, S., Nelson, R., Harding, D., Pitts, K., Robbins, J., et al. (2019). Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) for Land-Vegetation Along-Track Products (ATL08).