Use of remotely sensed data to estimate the flow of water to a playa lake

The presence of water on Rosamond lake presents potential operational hazards and environmental issues for Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB). This research tests the utility of threshold precipitation in predicting inundation of Rosamond lake. Arcview v.3.2, with the ESRI extension 'watershed delineator' and detailed field investigations were used to delineate the watershed and determine elevation-bounded intervals based on soil types and vegetation types and densities. The natural resource conservation service curve number approach was used to estimate the initial abstraction of precipitation, infiltration, runoff, and estimate the threshold depth of precipitation. Climatic data from the western regional climate center and remotely sensed data from the USA Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory were used to examine the association between winter precipitation events and surface water inundation. Visual-Data, a remote sensing analysis program, was used to analyze the Landsat multispectral images in the infrared (IR) bands and apply remote sensing techniques to determine the areal change of water on Rosamond lake over a defined temporal resolution. Threshold precipitation was then compared to precipitation events that occurred within the temporal resolution of the image subtractions to determine the association between precipitation and the inundation of Rosamond lake. The results of this study demonstrated that with refinement this approach could be used to predict the flow of water to a playa lake to predict the duration of inundation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.