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Caitlyn Butler

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Small lakes are important to local economies as sources of water supply and places of recreation. Commonly, lakes are considered more desirable for recreation if they are free of the thick weedy vegetation, often comprised of invasive species, that grows around the lake edge. This vegetation makes it difficult to launch boats and swim. In order to reduce this vegetation, a common technique in the Northeast and Midwest U.S. is a ‘winter drawdown’ . In a winter drawdown, the lake level is artificially lowered (via controls in a dam) during the winter to expose shoreline vegetation to freezing conditions, thereby killing them and preserving recreational value of the lake. However, this practice can impact both water...
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This data release consists of four datasets that were used for evaluating winter drawdown patterns in 166 Massachusetts lakes greater than 0.3 km2 surface area. The first dataset (“Water area and level.csv”) provides water area and water level time series data of 166 lakes from 2016 to 2021. Water area and water level time-series data were derived from European Space Agency’s Sentinel 1 synthetic aperture radar satellite sensor using the JavaScript code in Google Earth Engine platform. Details of this code were described in the software release (https://doi.org/10.5066/P9ZA5I1U). The second dataset (“Water area interpolated.csv”) is the linearly-interpolated daily water area time series data of the 166 lakes from...
LakeLevel Tracker’s user interface: Key features The application’s freely available interface guides users through a straightforward process to generate data and simple figures. Users can access the GEE web application at this link (https:// tinyurl.com/musexpyw), navigate to a lake and specify a date range to generate surface water area and water level charts (Figure 1). Users can visualize changes in surface water area and water level over seasons or years and download the data for further analysis. More information on how to use this web application with step-by-step instructions can be found at this link (https://tinyurl.com/yxnernxv).
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Abstract (from MDPI): Artificial manipulation of lake water levels through practices like winter water-level drawdown (WD) is prevalent across many regions, but the spatiotemporal patterns are not well documented due to limited in situ monitoring. Multi-sensor satellite remote sensing provides an opportunity to map and analyze drawdown frequency and metrics (timing, magnitude, duration) at broad scales. This study developed a cloud computing framework to process time series of synthetic aperture radar (Sentinel 1-SAR) and optical sensor (Landsat 8, Sentinel 2) data to characterize WD in 166 lakes across Massachusetts, USA, during 2016–2021. Comparisons with in situ logger data showed that the Sentinel 1-derived...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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This data release consists of four datasets which were used for evaluating winter drawdown (WD) lakes to follow the Massachusetts general WD guidelines. The first dataset ("Water level observations.csv") provides water level monitoring data of 21 (18 WD and 3 non-WD) recreational lakes in Massachusetts from 2014 to 2018. The water levels were measured by paired nonvented pressure transducers (HOBO U20L-01) and processed by ContDataQC package to remove potential inaccurate observations. For better comparison between lakes, the water level was relativized to each lake's normal pool level. This dataset was used for understanding the hydrology of WD and non-WD lakes and validating the hydrological model that we developed...
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