An Open-Source Tool to Facilitate the Processing of GRACE Observations and GLDAS Outputs: An Evaluation in Bangladesh

Bangladesh lies at the intersection of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers with a combined average discharge of 38,000 m3s-1 ranking fourth globally. Despite the volume of water flowing through and seasonally inundating parts of the landscape, groundwater reliance is necessary to support an i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in environmental science 2019-10, Vol.7
Main Authors: Purdy, Adam J., David, Cédric H., Sikder, Md. Safat, Reager, John T., Chandanpurkar, Hrishikesh A., Jones, Norman L., Matin, Mir A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accounting
Agricultural industry
Agricultural management
Agriculture
Anomalies
Arsenic
Climate change
Drought
Environmental science
Estimates
Floods
Food
food security
Food supply
GRACE (experiment)
Groundwater
Groundwater storage
Hydrologic cycle
Hydrology
Intensive farming
Irrigation
Open source software
Rivers
Science
Snow
Surface water
Surface-groundwater relations
sustainable management
Water management
water resources
Water shortages
Water storage
Wind
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Summary:Bangladesh lies at the intersection of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers with a combined average discharge of 38,000 m3s-1 ranking fourth globally. Despite the volume of water flowing through and seasonally inundating parts of the landscape, groundwater reliance is necessary to support an intensive agricultural industry. Here we use newly-developed open-source software to combine observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites with hydrologic estimates of land water storage from the Global Land Assimilation Data System (GLDAS) to isolate basin-scale groundwater anomalies in Northwest Bangladesh from 2002 to 2016. We place our estimates in the context of previously-published water management estimates and our results suggest the largest losses in water storage are due to groundwater abstractions with groundwater storage decreasing at a rate of 0.88 cm yr-1. We estimate basin-averaged total water storage loss from 2002 to 2016 at 27.92 cm with groundwater and surface water storage loss accounting for 12.46 cm or 44.6%. For Bangladesh, a region where 80% of landcover is dedicated for agricultural use and over half of the country’s population is employed in the agricultural sector, the estimated declines in water storage hold long-term implications for the livelihood and food supply of the region.
ISSN:2296-665X
2296-665X
DOI:10.3389/fenvs.2019.00155