Abstract
Since 2002, NASA's GRACE Satellite mission has allowed scientists of various disciplines to analyze and map the changes in Earth's total water storage on a global scale. Although the raw data is available to the public, the process of viewing, manipulating, and analyzing the GRACE data can be difficult for those without strong technological backgrounds in programming or geospatial software. This is particularly true for water managers in developing countries, where GRACE data could be a valuable asset for sustainable water resource management. To address this problem, I have a developed a utility for subsetting GRACE data to particular regions of interest and I have packaged that utility in a web app that allows water managers to quickly and easily visualize GRACE data these regions. Using the GLDAS-Noah Land Surface Model, the total water storage for the regions derived from the raw GRACE data is decomposed into surface water, soil moisture, and groundwater components. The GRACE Groundwater Subsetting Tool is easily deployed, open-source, and provides access to all of the major signal processing solutions available for the total water storage data. The application has been successfully applied to both developed and developing countries in various parts of the world, including the Central Valley region in California, Bangladesh, the La Plata River Basin in South America, and the SERVIR Hindu Kush Himalaya region. The groundwater data in this application has proven capable of monitoring groundwater use based on drought trends as well as agricultural demand in a number of locations and can assist in uniting decision makers and water users in the mission of sustainably managing the world's groundwater resources.
Degree
MS
College and Department
Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology; Civil and Environmental Engineering
Rights
https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
McStraw, Travis Clinton, "An Open-Source Web-Application for Regional Analysis of GRACE Groundwater Data and Engaging Stakeholders in Groundwater Management" (2020). Theses and Dissertations. 8144.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8144
Date Submitted
2020-04-08
Document Type
Thesis
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd11096
Keywords
GRACE Mission, GRACE-FO Mission, Earth Observations, Tethys Platform, Groundwater, Water Resources, Groundwater Sustainability, Transboundary Aquifer
Language
English