title: Continued decrease of open surface water body area in Oklahoma during 1984-2015.
abstract: Oklahoma contains the largest number of manmade lakes and reservoirs in the United States. Despite the importance of these open surface water bodies to public water supply, agriculture, thermoelectric power, tourism and recreation, it is unclear how these water bodies have responded to climate change and anthropogenic water exploitation in past decades. In this study, we used all available Landsat 5 and 7 images (16,000 scenes) from 1984 through 2015 and a water index- and pixel-based approach to analyze the spatial-temporal variability of open surface water bodies and its relationship with climate and water exploitation. Specifically, the areas and numbers of four water body extents (the maximum, year-long, seasonal, and average extents) were analyzed to capture variations in water body area and number. Statistically significant downward trends were found in the maximum, year-long, and annual average water body areas from 1984 through 2015. Furthermore, these decreases were mainly attributed to the continued shrinking of large water bodies (>1km2). There were also significant decreases in maximum and year-long water body numbers, which suggested that some of the water bodies were vanishing year by year. However, remarkable inter-annual variations of water body area and number were also found. Both water body area and number were positively related to precipitation, and negatively related to temperature. Surface water withdrawals mainly influenced the year-long water bodies. The smaller water bodies have a higher risk of drying under a drier climate, which suggests that small water bodies are more vulnerable under climate-warming senarios.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
authors.forename: Zhenhua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Jinwei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA; LinkedIn, LLC, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Menarguez
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA; Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, Institute of Biodiversity Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. Electronic address: xiangming.xiao@ou.edu.
authors.forename: Xiangming
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
authors.forename: Yuanwei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
authors.forename: Russell B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Doughty
authors.affiliation: Plankton Ecology and Limnology Laboratory, Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
authors.forename: Katherine V
authors.initials: KV
authors.lastname: Hooker
authors.affiliation: Plankton Ecology and Limnology Laboratory, Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: David Hambright
keywords: Climate change; Landsat; Mapping; Surface water body