Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741

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Remote Sensing of Environment

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / r s e

MODIS observations of the bottom topography and its inter-annual variability of

Poyang Lake
Lian Feng a, b, Chuanmin Hu b, Xiaoling Chen a, c,⁎, Rongfang Li d, e, Liqiao Tian a, Brock Murch b
a
State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
b
College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, 140 Seventh Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA
c
Key Laboratory of Poyang Lake Wetland and Watershed Research, Ministry of Education, JiangXi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China
d
College of Information Sciences and Technology Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China
e
Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Water Sciences, Nanchang 330029, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Using MODIS 250-m resolution data, we developed a novel approach to derive the bottom topography of
Received 13 April 2011 Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake of China (N3000 km 2 at maximum inundation) for every year
Received in revised form 14 June 2011 between 2000 and 2009. The approach differs from other traditional methods (sonar, Lidar, optical inversion,
Accepted 19 June 2011
and Radar) but takes advantage of the fast-changing nature of the lake's inundation area. On every image, the
Available online 20 July 2011
water/land boundary is effectively a topographic isobath after correction for the water level gradient. Thus,
Keywords:
the ~10/year carefully selected MODIS images provided incremental topographic isobaths, from which
Poyang Lake bottom topography was derived every year. Such-derived topographic maps were validated using limited
Bottom topography historical data and other consistency checks. Most of the lake bottom showed an elevation of 12 m to 17 m
Bathymetry (referenced against the elevation reference of the Woosung Horizontal Zero). Significant inter-annual
MODIS variability of the bottom topography from 2000 to 2009 was found for some of the lake's bottom, with more
Inundation areas associated with bottom elevation increases than decreases. The changes and inter-annual variability in
Remote sensing the bottom topography were attributed to the combined effect of human activities (e.g., sand dredging and
levee construction) and weather events. One example was the increased bottom elevation from 2002 to 2003,
which was apparently due to the excessive precipitation in 2002 and the impoundment of the Three-Gorges
Dam in 2003. The 10-year record of the bottom topography of this highly dynamic lake provides baseline
information to monitor the impact of future engineering and management activities, to estimate the lake's
water and sediment budgets, and to aid ship navigation.
© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction highly heterogeneous environments such as Poyang Lake where

Accurate bathymetric maps are not only important for nautical
charting and navigation safety, but also crucial for numerical
circulation modeling (Allen, 2000; Dawe & Allen, 2010; Song &
Haidvogel, 1994), understanding sediment transportation dynamics
(Alho & Mäkinen, 2010; Lane et al., 1999; Walker & Nickling, 2002),
and assessing benthic habitats (Lesser & Mobley, 2007; Stumpf et al.,
2003; Wedding & Friedlander, 2008). The traditional method for
bathymetry mapping is to use sonar along ship transects (Kiss & Sipos,
2007). In spite of the accurate measurements, this method is
constrained by the intensive labor, high cost, and environmental
conditions (Flener et al., 2010; Senet et al., 2008). For example, in
⁎ Corresponding author at: State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in
Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China.
Tel.: + 86 13907195381.
E-mail address: cecxl@yahoo.com (X. Chen).
bottom topography is extremely complex due to human activities
(routine sand dredging) and various water bodies are often separated
by shallow sandbars, it is nearly impossible to use ship surveys to
obtain bottom topography (i.e., bathymetry with known water levels)
for the entire lake. The fast-changing water levels also add difficulty in
mapping the bottom topography in a short time. Remote sensing
appears to be an ideal alternative means under such circumstances.
Yet all previous methods suffer from the high turbidity in most inland
waters. One of the objectives in this work is therefore to seek
applicable remote sensing methods to derive bottom topography in
the highly dynamic and turbid Poyang Lake.
Various remote sensing methods have been introduced in the past
to determine shallow-water bathymetry or bottom topography. One
of them is the airborne light detection and ranging (LIDAR) (e.g., Costa
et al., 2009; Gesch & Wilson, 2002; Lyzenga, 1985; Wang & Philpot,
2007). However, the high cost, narrow swath, and requirement on low
turbidity, restrict its routine use. Radar technique has also been used
because of its advantage over cloudy weather (Calkoen et al., 2001;
Romeiser et al., 2000), yet satisfactory results can only be obtained when

0034-4257/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.rse.2011.06.013
2730 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741

data are collected under optimal surface conditions (Gao, 2009). Passive
remote sensing that measures reflected sunlight has also been used for
decades to map bathymetry. Based on the empirical relationship
between several spectral bands, and gauged by limited point measure-
ments of bottom depth, bathymetry can be derived using empirical or
neural network algorithms (Carbonneau et al., 2006; Ceyhun & Yalçın,
2010; Lyzenga, 1978; Sandidge & Holyer, 1998; Stumpf et al., 2003).
Through radiative transfer modeling of the light transmission, bathym-
etry can also be derived using single, multi- or hyper-spectral bands of
remote sensed data (Lee et al., 1999; Lee et al., 2001; Lyzenga et al.,
2006; Philpot, 1989). In a recent paper, Lee et al. (2010) showed that the
medium resolution (300-m) satellite data collected by the multi-
spectral MERIS instrument could also be used to derive bathymetry in
optically shallow waters such as the Bahamas Banks. However, all the
active and passive remote sensing techniques are restricted to optically
shallow waters (Bagheri et al., 1998; Gao, 2009; Hamilton et al., 1993;
Lafon et al., 2002; Lee et al., 1999; Wang & Philpot, 2007). In turbid
waters (i.e., optically deep), those techniques are generally not
applicable. One such case is Poyang Lake of China.
As the largest freshwater lake in China, Poyang Lake (see Fig. 1) plays a
critical role to support shipping, flood regulation, and biodiversity
maintenance (Li et al., 2003; Zhao et al., 2007). However, due to severe
soil erosion in the Poyang Lake drainage, sediment from the tributaries
has silted into the lake, resulting in an elevated and unevenly distributed
bottom topography (Chen et al., 2007) and frequent flooding (Shankman
et al., 2006). In addition, the impoundment of the Three Gorges Dam in
the upstream of the Yangtze River changed the hydrologic processes and
therefore influenced the silting and scouring pattern of the lake's
sediments (Zhao et al., 2010); these changes may have modulated the
lake's bottom topography. However, to date, no quantitative bottom
topography map is available in either refereed or grey literature, not to
mention the information on how the bottom topography may have
changed in the past decade. This is primarily due to highly turbid lake
water, with suspended sediment concentrations reaching N100 mg L− 1
and Secchi depthb 0.1 m (Wu et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2008). All these
published methods (ship-borne sonar, airborne LIDAR, Radar and passive
remote sensing) are difficult to apply in this situation, thus, new methods
must be developed.

Fig. 1. Location of the Poyang Lake, China. The lake has five main tributaries and discharges to the Yangtze (Changjiang) River in the north. The positions of the eight hydrologic
stations are annotated. Bottom elevation data along the three transects (annotated as black lines) were collected in 1952 by the Changjiang Water Resources Commission of China
(http://eng.cjw.gov.cn/). The inset map shows the location of Poyang Lake and the Three Gorges Dam.
 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741
It has been well recognized that optical remote sensing imagery
can be used to assess coastal inundation conditions. For example, Oey
et al. (2007) used MODIS observations of dry/wet conditions in the
Cook Inlet (Alaska) to validate numerical circulation models, as some
of the mud flats experienced changing dry/wet conditions within tidal
cycles. The inundation area of Poyang Lake shows significant seasonal
variations, as observed from MODIS time-series imagery (Feng et al.,
submitted for publication). If the water levels around the water/land
boundary are known, elevation along the boundary can be derived.
The dynamic change in the inundation area will enable a sequence of
such elevation lines to be derived, resulting in the bottom topography.
Indeed, water level data have been continuously acquired from
several hydrologic stations in the lake, and MODIS instruments
onboard Terra and Aqua satellites have provided data over the entire
globe since 1999 and 2002, respectively. The high-frequency (twice a
day) and medium resolution (250 m) measurements are particularly
suitable for delineating the water/land boundaries for such a large
inland lake.
Thus, given the capability of MODIS 250-m imagery in studying
inundation changes (Feng et al., submitted for publication; Oey et al.,
2007) and the fast-changing nature of lake inundation area of China's
largest freshwater lake, we combined long-term MODIS measurements
and daily water level data from several hydrologic stations to develop a
novel approach to map Poyang Lake's bottom topography and to fill our
knowledge gap in understanding their spatial/temporal distributions,
with the following objectives:
1. Develop a novel approach to determine the bottom topography for
highly turbid waters, which may be applied to other similar coastal
and inland water bodies;
2. Document and understand the inter-annual variations and long-
term trend of the bottom topography of Poyang Lake from 2000 to
2009;
3. Establish baseline information for future estimations of the bottom
changes and provide bottom topographic data for other
applications.
In this paper, bottom topography refers to the bottom elevation
distribution map, where elevation at each location is referenced
against a standard Woosung Horizontal Zero (W.H.Z.) (http://baike.
baidu.com/view/173481.htm). Here the term “bottom” means the
geo-referenced locations falling within the maximum inundation area
of the lake (N3000 km 2) even if they are often exposed to the air due
to shrinking lake inundation. In contrast, when the term “bathymetry”
is used, the bathymetry of a certain location refers to the difference
between the instantaneous water level at that location (referenced
also against the W.H.Z.) and the bottom elevation; note that the water
level of the lake changes rapidly throughout the year and there is also
a spatial gradient in the lake's water level.
The manuscript is arranged as follows. The general environmental
setting of Poyang Lake is introduced first, followed by the approach to
derive its bottom topography. Then, the spatial distributions of
various topographic features and their inter-annual variations are
presented. Finally, the possible causes of the temporal changes as well
as the implications of these findings are discussed.
2. Environmental setting of Poyang Lake
Poyang Lake is located in the north of Jiangxi Province and south
bank of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze (Changjiang)
River (28°22′–29°45′N and 115°47′–116°45′E, Fig. 1). The storage
capacity of the Poyang Lake is about 27.6 billion m 3 when the water
level at Hukou is 21.71 m (http://www.poyanglake.net/pyhgk.htm).
The drainage area of the lake is 162,225 km 2, which accounts for
about 97% of Jiangxi province (Shankman & Liang, 2003). During the
dry season, the exposed floodplain provides important habitats for
hundreds of thousands of winter birds (Leeuw et al., 2010). Indeed,
2731
Poyang Lake region is one of the most important wetlands in the
world, which has been recognized by the International Union for
Conservation of Nature (Finlayson et al., 2010). Unfortunately, illegal
dredging, poplar planting, and levee construction in recent years
tended to destroy the wetlands as well as the ecological system of this
region (Li, 2008; Liu, 2007).
Poyang Lake is divided geographically into two parts by Songmen
Mountain: a large and shallow southern portion and a narrower and
deeper outlet of the northern portion. Five main tributaries (Ganjiang,
Fuhe, Xiushui, Xinjiang, and Raohe) and rainfall provide the lake its
main source of water. Poyang Lake normally flows from the south and
discharges (outflow) into the Yangtze River at Hukou in the north.
Under normal conditions, the water level in the south is higher than in
the north. However, during the wet season, the elevated water level of
the Yangtze River impedes the south–north water flow, and sometimes
(usually between July and September) results in a reversed north–south
flow (Shankman et al., 2006). When this occurs, the water level of the
entire lake is almost the same (Qi et al., 2010).
The Poyang Lake region is influenced by subtropical monsoons
(Zhang, 1988). The seasonality of precipitation and other meteorological
conditions lead to significant variations in the lake's inundation area.
This can change from N3000 km2 during the wet season to b1000 km2
during the dry season (Feng et al., submitted for publication; Hui et al.,
2008). Although the dynamic changes in the inundation area create
difficulty in estimating some environmental parameters (e.g., sus-
pended sediment concentration), these same changes enable our novel
approach to derive bottom topography in this complex environment.
3. Data sources
Data used in this study included MODIS 250-m and 500-m resolution
data between 2000 and 2009, daily water level data collected from
several hydrologic stations, annual precipitation data over the lake's
drainage area, and bottom elevation data collected along three cross-
lake transects in 1952.
The method to obtain and process MODIS data was detailed in Feng
et al. (submitted for publication). Briefly, MODIS Level-0 data collected
by the Terra and Aqua satellites between 2000–2009 and 2002–2009,
respectively, were obtained from the U.S. NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center (GSFC). The Level-0 data were processed using SeaDAS software
(version 6.1, http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/seadas/) to generate cali-
brated at-sensor radiance, first corrected for Rayleigh scattering and
gaseous absorption effects, and then converted to Rayleigh-corrected
reflectance for each pixel:
 
Rrc;λ = πLt;λ
= F0; λ × cosθ0 −Rr; λ;
ð1Þ
where λ is the wavelength of the MODIS spectral band, Lt* is the
calibrated sensor radiance after correction for gaseous absorption, F0 is
the extraterrestrial solar irradiance, θ0 is the solar zenith angle, and Rr is
the reflectance due to Rayleigh (molecular) scattering. Rrc data were
geo-referenced to a rectangular projection with an error of less than
0.5 pixels. Then, three MODIS bands (645, 555, and 469 nm) were used
to generate Red–Green–Blue “true-color” composite images at 250-m
resolution. Note that the 500 m resolution data (at 469 and 555 nm)
were resampled to 250 m resolution using a “sharpening” scheme
(Pohl & Van Genderen, 1998) to improve the appearance of the
RGB images, but they were not used to delineate water/land interface.
Of the 6000 images covering the Poyang Lake region between 2000 and
2009, about 500 cloud-free images were selected for this study.
Water level data were obtained from the hydrologic stations in
Poyang Lake (Fig. 1). Between 2000 and 2005, daily observations were
available from all eight stations; between 2006 and 2009 data from the
Hukou station were not available. These water level data were calibrated
against the elevation reference of Woosung Horizontal Zero (W.H.Z.).
2732 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741

Annual precipitation data from 2000 to 2009 were obtained from
the China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System (http://cdc.
cma.gov.cn/). The mean data from 15 meteorological stations in the
Poyang Lake drainage were used to represent the precipitation
condition for the Poyang Lake region.
In 1952, bottom elevation along three transects (Fig. 1) was
measured by the Changjiang Water Resources Commission of China
(http://eng.cjw.gov.cn/). The method used to measure the elevation,
however, was unavailable in the literature. These elevation data were
referenced against the W.H.Z.
4. Method to derive bottom topography
4.1. Water/land boundary delineation
The delineation method was detailed in Feng et al. (submitted for
publication). Briefly, floating algae index (FAI) images were first
derived using Rrc data at 645-, 859-, and 1240-nm. For this purpose, FAI
is simply the reflectance at 859-nm after a simple but effective
atmospheric correction (through subtraction of the 645- and 1240-nm
baseline). Thus, compared with other methods, FAI is more stable
against environmental (aerosol type and thickness) and observing
(solar/viewing geometry) conditions (Hu, 2009). A gradient image
was derived from the FAI image, where a pixel's gradient was
determined by the FAI difference from the neighboring 3 × 3 pixels.
Because of the strong water absorption, water reflectance at 859 nm is
much lower than of land, resulting in strong FAI gradient at the water/
land boundary. The resulting boundaries were visually examined with
co-registered RGB images, with the water/land interface highlighted in
white (see examples in Fig. 2b).
The lake boundaries and water-level data were screened together
carefully. Images corresponding to minimum and maximum inunda-
tion areas in each year were kept. In between, images showing gradual
increases in water area (and thus water level) were selected. Several
examples are shown in Fig. 2, with the water level data in Fig. 2c being
collected on the same day as the acquisition time of the images in
Fig. 2b. The inundation area of Poyang Lake increased from 1677 km 2
on 14 March 2000 to 2557 km 2 on 14 July 2000, and then decreased to
902 km 2 on 26 December 2000. Correspondingly, the water level
showed increase or decrease during these periods. Table 1 lists the
number of selected MODIS images, the maximum/minimum/mean
inundation areas, and the maximum/minimum/mean water levels (as
measured by the hydrologic stations) during each year.
4.2. Bottom topography derivation
The inundation area of Poyang Lake changes dramatically during
different seasons, with the maximum/minimum inundation ratio

Fig. 2. (a) Schematic diagram showing how bottom topography was derived from MODIS measurements of the water/land boundary (green) and concurrent water-level data from
several hydrologic stations; (b) MODIS RGB images showing three different lake inundation conditions, where the white lines denote the water/land boundaries determined by the
FAI gradient method (Feng et al., submitted for publication); (c) Water level data corrected at the hydrologic stations concurrent with the MODIS measurements.
 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741 2733

Table 1
Number of MODIS 250-m resolution images used in deriving the bottom topography of Poyang Lake. Also listed are the maximum, minimum, mean, and increment of water level and
water area for each year between 2000 and 2009.

Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Mean

Number of images 8 10 11 10 10 11 9 9 12 9 9.9

Water level (m) Max 17.77 15.32 18.84 18.81 17.18 18.72 16.83 18.47 17.59 16.83 18.84
Min 12.13 11.90 11.43 10.28 11.37 10.87 10.91 10.33 10.47 10.84 10.28
Increment⁎ 0.71 0.34 0.67 0.85 0.58 0.71 0.66 0.90 0.59 0.67 0.67
Water area (km2) Max 2557 1948 2606 2614 2158 2713 2302 2442 2172 1981 2350
Min 903 653 758 599 607 663 478 517 538 499 622
Increment⁎ 207 130 168 201 155 186 203 214 136 165 176
⁎ Defined as (Max–Min)/number of images.

between 2.3 and 3.2 (Feng et al., submitted for publication). The ratio
became higher in this study, as some relatively stable water bodies
and minimum inundation regions that Feng et al. used were excluded.
When the inundation area decreased from its maxima, the floodplain
exposed, with the water/land boundary shrinking towards the center
of the lake. If the water level was the same across the entire water
surface, the water/land boundaries during this shrinking process
could be considered as topographic isobaths. However, during most of
the time the water level showed spatial gradient (Fig. 2c), so the
water/land boundaries must be corrected for this gradient in order to
serve as topographic isobaths (Fig. 2).
Normally, the water of Poyang Lake flows from the south to the
north into the Yangtze River, suggesting decreasing water levels
with increasing latitudes (e.g., Fig. 2c). Although only 8 (or 7 between
2006 and 2009) water level stations were available for this study, the
monotonous decrease from the south to the north for most of the time
suggested that the water level in the entire lake is highly correlated
with latitude, and a latitudinal interpolation could be used to derive
water levels for every location. Indeed, such monotonous decreases
can be clearly viewed for most of the time in the high coefficient of
determination (R 2) between water levels and latitudes from the
hydrologic stations (Fig. 3). Corresponding to the high R 2 values are
the high standard deviation values among the 8 (or 7) stations,
indicating the strong spatial gradient. In contrast, no correlation (R 2
can reach 0) was found between locations (latitudes) and water levels
during large inundation periods (high water levels). During these
periods, the high water level of the Yangtze River would impede the
water flow from the lake (or even cause reversed flow from the north
to the south), leading to similar water levels from the hydrologic
stations (standard deviation b0.5 m). Thus, for such cases, the mean
water level from all the stations was used to represent the entire lake.
In practice, if the linear regression correlation between latitudes
and water levels was significant (p b 0.05), water level for any given
location of the lake was determined by latitudinal interpolation.
Otherwise, the mean water level from each hydrologic station was
used to represent the entire lake (Fig. 3).
Fig. 2a shows a schematic diagram on the method to derive the
bottom topography. The (x, y) coordinates represent longitude and
latitude of the land/water boundary (and therefore location of the
bottom under inundation conditions), respectively. The water level
of the lake at time t is denoted as h(t, x, y). S1(x1, y1), S2(x2, y2) and
S3(x3, y3) are the locations of the hydrologic stations, from which
the water level data were collected and referenced against the
Woosung Horizontal Zero (W.H.Z.). (For simplicity, only 3 stations
were used here to show the concept; in the calculations all 8 or 7
stations were used.) Bottom topography was derived from the
following steps:
I. Derive bottom elevation at the water/land boundary from each
MODIS “snapshot” measurement.
1) At time t1, the lake surface is almost flat, i.e., the standard
deviation of the water level data from the S1–3 stations is small
(b0.5 m). The water level of the entire lake and bottom
elevation along the water/land boundary can be approximated
using the mean, i.e., (h(t1, x1, y1) + h(t1, x2, y2) + h(t1, x3,
y3))/3. One example from the 14 July 2000 MODIS measure-
ment is shown in Fig. 2b and c, which represents the maximum
inundation during that year.
2) At time t2, the lake surface inclines slightly in the y (latitude)
direction. Water level data collected at the S1–3 stations (h(t2,
x1, y1), h(t2, x2, y2), h(t2, x3, y3)) are highly correlated with their
locations in y (y1, y2, y3) (Fig. 2c). Thus, at any location (x, y),
water level h(t2, x, y), derived as a function of y. h(t2, x, y) along
the water/land boundary, is the bottom elevation at those
locations. For another time t3 (or any other times when
MODIS measurements are available to provide water/land
boundary) h(t3, x, y) can be derived in the same way. Two
examples from the 26 December 2000 and 14 March 2000
MODIS are shown in Figs. 2b and c.
II. Derive projected contour maps. The bottom elevation along the
water/land boundary derived from each MODIS image and the
corresponding water level data in Step I was projected to a reference
surface to obtain a contour line (Fig. 2a). If overlap occurred between

Fig. 3. The coefficient of determination (R square) between the water level data measured at 8 (or 7) hydrologic stations and the stations' latitudes for every image. Water level data
were referenced against the Woosung Horizontal Zero (W.H.Z.). The mean and standard deviation of the water level are also plotted. A high R2 value indicates linear relationship
between water level and latitude (Fig. 2c), and such a relationship was used to determine the water levels at each location of the lake using latitudinal interpolation. The near-zero R2
value indicate that water level data from all 8 (or 7) stations are nearly identical (low standard deviations), and the corresponding mean values (red circles) were therefore used to
represent the water level of the entire lake.
2734 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741

Table 2
Percentage of undetermined area in the bottom topography of Poyang Lake. When all data between 2000 and 2009 were combined, only 1.85% of the lake's bottom topography could
not be determined.

Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2000–2009

Percentage (%) 17.94 16.99 14.16 9.77 12.71 10.53 8.48 9.45 10.83 9.02 1.85

two contour lines in some locations where the inundation did not
change, the one from the smaller surface inundation was selected.
This only occurred a few times where local water level deviates from
that inferred from the mean water-level gradient, and thus would
have minimal impact on the results.
III. Derive bottom topography. After applying a Kriging interpolation
to the contour lines, a smooth and continuous topography map was
generated. However, the region within the smallest water/land
boundary C3(x, y) cannot be derived since it is impossible to achieve
the water level data under the minimum inundation. Indeed, the
elevation of the undetermined part should be smaller than C3(x, y).

The above approach can only be applied to areas exposed to the air at
least one time during the year. For areas that are covered by water all the
time, the approach is simply not applicable. There are two cases
(annotated as “1” and “2” in Fig. 1) that represent this situation: Case 1
includes several small lakes (Jiaotan Lake, Xihu Lake, Zhu Lake, etc.) and
Case 2 is Qinglan Lake. These lake segments disconnect from the main
water body at a certain time during the year, after which the water level
data collected from stations outside these lake segments cannot be used
to derive bottom elevation for these areas. Under these circumstances,
bottom elevation in the maps was annotated as “undetermined.” These
“undetermined” areas represent only a small portion (8–18%, Table 2) of
the entire lake when maximum inundation occurs.

4.3. Validation

A variety of methods can be used to validate the satellite-derived

bottom topography. For example, Aarninkhof et al. (2003) used video
images on beaches to determine the water/land boundaries in the
inter-tidal zone and applied hydrodynamic models to determine the
elevations of the water/land boundaries, validated by point measure-
ments of water levels. Independent LIDAR or sonar measurements
have also been used to validate satellite-based estimates (Lee et al.,
1999; Lee et al., 2001; Lyzenga et al., 2006; Sandidge & Holyer, 1998).
Due to its highly dynamic and turbid nature, quantitative bathymetric
data for Poyang Lake are extremely scarce, complicating direct
validation. Indeed, we searched the entire refereed and grey literature
for available bathymetry or bottom elevation data of Poyang Lake, yet
only limited data were available from a half century ago collected by
the Changjiang Water Resources Commission of China (http://eng.
cjw.gov.cn/), based on opportunistic measurements in 1952. These
data were used to partially validate our satellite-based estimates.
The comparison shown in Fig. 4 between the field-measured bottom
elevation in the 1950s and those derived from MODIS and water-level
data in the 2000s (mean value between 2000 and 2009) shows
remarkable similarity. With a root mean square (RMS) difference of
0.88 m and mean ratio of 1.012 (n = 180) for the elevation range of
7.7–17.9 m, the two datasets showed the same spatial distribution
patterns along all 3 transects (Fig. 4). However, large relative differences
can be observed in some locations of Transect I and Transect II, which are
located in the northern outlet and estuaries of Xiushui and Ganjiang,
respectively. These differences between the two datasets with 50 years
apart may not indicate errors in either one of them, but suggest the
bottom topographic changes between the 1950s and 2000s, induced by
siltation and scouring processes as well as human activities in these
regions (see below).

5. Bottom topography of Poyang Lake and its inter-annual variability

Fig. 4. Comparison between Poyang Lake bottom elevation along three transects (Fig. 1)
derived from the 2000–2009 MODIS data and measured in the field in 1952. Note that
because of the significant natural processes (e.g., land erosion) and human activities
For each year from 2000 to 2009, the bottom topography of Poyang
(e.g., sand-dredging), the two datasets 50 years apart can only be compared to infer Lake derived from the above method is presented in Fig. 5. While
general patterns, and their differences do not necessarily mean errors in any dataset. inter-annual variability is apparent in some lake segments (see
 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741 2735

Fig. 5. Bottom topography of Poyang Lake, referenced against the Woosung Horizontal Zero (W.H.Z.), during each year from 2000 to 2009. The last panel shows the 10-year mean.

Fig. 6. Distribution of Poyang Lake's bottom elevation, derived from the 10-year mean bottom topography. N50% the lake bottom has an elevation of 12–17 m.
2736 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741

Fig. 7. Changes in Poyang Lake's bottom topography during each 2-year period from 2000 to 2009. Significant change occurred from 2002 to 2004. The difference between 2009 and
2000 is shown in the last panel.

below), the mean 2000–2009 bottom topography, shown in the last
panel of Fig. 5, revealed general spatial distributions and statistics
across the entire lake. The mean map was derived as the arithmetic
mean of all available data, excluding those “undetermined” areas. This
resulted in 98.15% of the lake coverage when all data were combined
(Table 2, Fig. 5 last panel).
From all individual years and from the 2000–2009 composite
maps, nearly all locations in the lake showed bottom topographic
features, while the small portions of “undetermined” parts of the lake
(shown in blue) were within the minimum inundation area. The
elevation varied substantially in different lake segments and generally
decreased from the south to the north. The low elevation (b12 m) of

Table 3
Percentage of the area of elevation increases/decreases of the Poyang Lake bottom during each period from 2000 to 2009.

Period 2001–2000 2002–2001 2003–2002 2004–2003 2005–2004 2006–2005 2007–2006 2008–2007 2009–2008 2009–2000

Increase (%) 44.6 39.7 54.8 53.5 36.9 34.5 37.6 39.7 48.5 53.4
Decrease (%) 22.3 28.2 19.6 19.4 32.5 31.7 34.0 31.4 20.3 23.1
Ratio* 2.0 1.4 2.8 2.8 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.3 2.4 2.3
⁎Defined as increase/decrease.
 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741
Fig. 8. 10-year variability of Poyang Lake's bottom topography, as represented by the standard deviation in the bottom elevation at each location. High variability is found in the
northern outlet and the tributaries. Two regions are enlarged in (a) and (b) to show the high variability due primarily to sand dredging activities.
the northern outlet was relatively uniform, while a large gradient was
found in the southern portion of the lake. The tributaries, especially
Ganjiang, showed higher elevation than the rest of the lake. The
distribution histogram in Fig. 6 showed that the bottom elevation of
Poyang Lake (excluding the 1.85% undetermined area) ranged
between 7 and 19 m, with ~ 80% of the lake's bottom elevation
between 12 and 17 m. The low-elevation (7–12 m) regions only
accounted for b 12% of the total area.
To determine the inter-annual changes in the bottom topography,
difference images were derived from each two consecutive years
between 2000 and 2009, where values exceed an error bound
(discussed below) indicated elevation increases or decreases. Likewise,
a difference image from 2000 to 2009 was derived to show the net
change during the 10-year period (Fig. 7). The calculation was not
applied to the undetermined areas. The percentage of the lake's bottom
Fig. 9. The mean and standard deviation of bottom elevation of Xieshan Lake (a segment of
Poyang Lake) between 2000 and 2009. Mean elevation in 2003 and 2005 was much higher
than in other years.
2737
area with elevation increases or decreases is tabulated in Table 3. In all
the years from 2000 to 2009, the increased portion of the lake was larger
than the decreased portion. During the periods of 2000–2001,
2002–2003, 2003–2004 and 2008–2009, the increased/decreased ratio
exceeded 2. Indeed, several regions experienced significant elevation
increases from 2002 to 2003; these included the estuaries of Ganjiang
and Xiushui, the northern outlet, and the lake segment east of Songmen
Mountain. Overall, 53.4% and 23.1% of the lake's bottom showed
elevation increases and decreases respectively from 2000 to 2009
(Table 3).
While the inter-annual changes in the lake's bottom topography can
be clearly visualized from the distribution maps in Figs. 5 and 7, inter-
annual variability at each location was quantified from the standard
deviation estimates at the location. Specifically, for each location, a
standard deviation from the 10 observations was derived if N3
observations were valid (i.e., not “undetermined”). The inter-annual
variability of the bottom topography is clearly revealed from the 10-year
standard deviation map in Fig. 8. The southern portion of the lake was
relatively stable except for the five tributaries. In contrast, high
variability (large standard deviation values) can be observed in the
northern outlet. The highest variability was found at Xieshan Lake
(annotated as “3” in Fig. 1), where the mean and standard deviation of
bottom elevation in each year was plotted in Fig. 9.
To verify whether a long-term trend existed for the bottom
changes between 2000 and 2009, the annual mean elevation of the
lake's bottom was estimated and presented in Fig. 10. Also plotted was
the annual precipitation anomaly (departure from the climatology
between 2000 and 2009) for the same period. From 2002 to 2004, the
2738 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741
Fig. 10. The mean elevation and annual precipitation anomaly (in percentage) of Poyang Lake between 2000 and 2009. The mean elevation shows an overall increasing trend
(statistically insignificant), with a maximum in 2004. The precipitation shows an overall decreasing trend, with a maximum in 2002.
mean bottom elevation showed a significant increase (~ 0.7 m). From
2004 to 2008, the bottom decreased continuously. A linear least-
square regression between the annual mean elevation and time
revealed an increasing trend (0.023 m yr − 1, statistically insignificant)
from 2000 to 2009.
6. Discussion
6.1. Accuracy
The lack of concurrent field data makes an absolute validation of
the MODIS-based bottom topography impossible. However, it is
possible to use indirect evidence to demonstrate the validity of the
approach and the low uncertainties in the derived bottom
topography.
First, the comparison between the field-measured and MODIS-derived
bottom elevation showed general agreement for the entire dynamic
range, even if the two independent datasets were 50 years apart (Fig. 4).
This agreement suggests that the general distribution patterns in the
MODIS-derived bottom topography are valid.
Second, bottom elevations in most of the locations are consistent
across individual years, especially for the central portion of the lake,
where their spatial distributions are similar from different years,
resulting in homogenous standard deviation (Fig. 8). Because it is
logical to assume that this large, relatively flat lake bottom should
remain stable over 10 years, any observed changes in these regions
during the 10-year period may actually be due to errors in our method.
Thus, the mean standard deviation of this homogenous area, 0.49 m, can
be considered as the error bound of the MODIS derived bottom
topography.
Finally, the high inter-annual variability in some lake segments can
be well explained by the known human activities such as sand dredging
(see below). Thus, we believe that these MODIS-based topography
estimates, gauged by the water-level measurements, are sufficiently
accurate to study both spatial and temporal changes. Although an
absolute estimate is impossible, we believe that uncertainty is generally
b0.5 m, and for most of the lake areas the uncertainty could be b0.2 m.
Indeed, given the unique characteristics of Poyang Lake (large size,
high dynamic change in inundation area, heterogeneous topography,
disconnection between lake segments during certain periods of the
year, and extreme shallow water depth of some lake segments even
during maximum inundation), our approach is perhaps the most cost-
effective yet valid approach to derive synoptic topographic patterns
across the entire lake. All other means suffer from either technical
difficulty or high cost. For example, ship-borne sonar is highly
accurate at any particular location, but mapping the entire lake will
take at least several weeks, during which water level may change
significantly and the same correction as in our approach is required to
derive a map. Also, some of the shallow lake segments may be
inaccessible for boat operations. Airborne LIDAR measurements suffer
from similar heterogeneous environment (fast-changing), in addition
to its high cost and limitations in highly turbid waters. Overall, the
free and frequent availability of MODIS data, combined with our
approach to take advantage of the high dynamic water level changes,
may provide cost-effective yet relatively accurate bottom topography
maps every year to study spatial and temporal changes.
6.2. Causes of topographic changes
The Poyang Lake region suffers from severe soil erosion, which is
the result of the combined effects of the steep slope of the Poyang Lake
drainage, the poorly structured stand and age of the forest, excessive
deforestation, large proportion of sandy soil as well as the frequent
heavy rain in this area (Chen et al., 2007; Shi et al., 2008; Xie, 1999;
Zuo, 2004). Consequently, large amount of sediments are discharged
into Poyang Lake from the five tributaries. When the “typical” water
flow from the lake to the Changjiang River is impeded during the
summer, the sediment discharge would slow down, resulting in
sediment siltation and increased bottom elevation. When the lake's
water level is high from November to March of the next year, the
silted sediment will be scoured by the rapid lake-river water flow,
resulting in decreased elevation (Zhang, 1988). Generally, sediment
siltation in the lake was more the than sediment discharged into the
Changjiang River (Chen et al., 2010; Cheng, 2008; Ma et al., 2003;
Zhao et al., 2007). This could well explain the overall elevated bottom
topography from 2000 to 2009. As the bridge between Poyang Lake
and the Changjiang River, the northern outlet, is the region where the
lake and river exchange water and materials, and thus showed
significant inter-annual variability (Fig. 8). For the same reasons,
areas near the tributaries also showed high inter-annual variability as
they are the direct recipients of the sediment discharge from the
tributaries.
Fig. 11. Digital photo taken in the northern outlet of Poyang Lake on 21 October 2008
showing the sand-dredging vessels.
 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741
Changes in the siltation and scouring processes of Poyang Lake will
lead to changes of the bottom topography. In 2002, annual precipitation
was significantly higher than in other years (Fig. 10), leading to increased
sediment load from the tributaries to the lake. At the same time, the
water level of the Changjiang River was elevated because of the
increased rainfall in the river's middle reach (Jin & Wan, 2003), impeding
the lake-river water flow and sediment discharge. Consequently, more
sediments were kept in the lake during the scouring process than in
other years, resulting in more siltation in the spring months of the next
year. Furthermore, the Three Gorges Dam, constructed upstream of
Poyang Lake on the Changjiang River (~870 km from Hukou), was
impounded in June 2003 (Zhao et al., 2010), resulting in reduced water
flow and water level in the river's downstream (Shankman et al., 2006).
This would cause faster lake-river water flow. The swift water flow
together with the high sediment load of 2002 led to more sediment
siltation in the northern outlet and areas near the tributaries, thus
causing increased bottom elevation in 2003. The combined effect
appears to have continued to 2004. The same reasons could also explain
the increased bottom elevation in Xieshan Lake from 2003 to 2006
(Fig. 9).
A management policy became effective in 1998, which prohibited
sand dredging in the Changjiang River (Wu et al., 2007). Since then,
numerous dredging vessels were deployed in Poyang Lake (Wu et al.,
2007), leading to excessive and often ill-organized sand dredging in
some lake segments, particularly in the northern outlet of Poyang
Lake. A survey conducted in 2006 revealed that there were more than
1600 large dredging vessels within 45 km between Hukou and Xingzi
(Liu, 2007), where an example is provided in Fig. 11. Some of these
vessels can dredge a 100-m diameter hole in a single operation (Xu,
2009). Some, if not all, of the areas with high inter-annual variability
are apparently due to the dredging activities. For example, for the
areas in the northern outlet and near Songmen Mountain (Fig. 8), the
high inter-annual variability in the bottom topography is due to the
heavy dredging activities, as shown by the numerous dredging vessels
on the high-resolution images of Google Earth (http://www.google.
com/earth/index.html).
Levee construction around the lake is another possible reason to
cause inter-annual changes in the bottom topography. During the dry
season, farmers often build levees of 1–5 m in height, on the exposed
floodplain and “harvest” fish in the levee-confined waters during the dry
season of the next year (http://finance.people.com.cn/GB/6949650.
html). These fishing activities could also result in topographic changes,
yet the exact location and frequency of levee construction are difficult to
obtain, prohibiting a quantitative analysis.
6.3. Long-term monitoring and other applications
The success of the approach to derive annual bottom topography
relies on the frequent and synoptic satellite measurements at
sufficient ground resolution. The two MODIS instruments on the
Terra and Aqua satellites, respectively, provide 1–2 observations per
day for Poyang Lake. Even so, due to frequent cloud cover during the
summer months, there was often only one cloud-free measurement in a
particular month. Thus, the likelihood of obtaining a cloud-free image
during the “cloudy” months from less frequent satellite missions (e.g.,
16-day Landsat measurement) is much lower. In 2008, the HJ-1A/1B
satellites (http://www.cresda.com/n16/n1130/n1582/8384.html) were
launched by the State Environmental Protection Administration and the
National Committee for Disaster Reduction of China. The two CCD
instruments on each satellite provide a co-swath of 720 km (compare:
MODIS swath width is 2330 km), resulting in one observation every two
days at a nadir resolution of 30 m. The same approach applied to these
high-resolution measurements at moderate frequency may improve the
MODIS estimates in refining small-scale features, and ultimately
generate a merged long-term time series to monitor the topographic
changes in the lake bottom. Such capacity may provide an unprece-
2739
dented tool to help implement management policies such as dredging
regulations. Likewise, potential impacts, caused by abnormal weather
patterns that may be linked to climate change, can also be assessed with
the continuous satellite missions.
All numerical circulation models for shallow waters require bottom
topographic data as input. In the past, these data were simply not
available for Poyang Lake. The derived bottom topography maps, with
frequent annual updates, will provide boundary conditions to the
numerical models to improve our understanding in water circulation.
Combined with the water level data, the topography maps may also
be used to derive the water volume of the entire lake as a function of
time. Such a complex task appears impossible with all other means
because of the inter-annual changes in the bottom topography.
Although there are some small areas (8–18% of the lake) where
bottom topography could not be derived, the water volume data can
still be used to estimate the relative temporal changes in the lake's
water volume. As water shortage represents a serious problem in
China, such changes provide critical information to estimate and
regulate the lake's water budget. We expect to work in this area as our
next step.
The findings here have significant implications for ship navigation.
Although bottom topography changes every year in certain areas,
most of the lake's bottom remains relatively stable. Thus, once water
level is known from the nearby hydrologic station, water depth can be
derived as the difference between water level and bottom elevation.
Such information available in near real-time will greatly facilitate
planning ship transects, saving fuel and time, and avoiding potential
grounding. In particular, if the same work is performed annually with
bottom topographic maps updated every year, even those areas with
high inter-annual variability become less hazardous in terms of ship
navigation.
7. Summary and conclusions
The largest freshwater lake of China, Poyang Lake, has a
heterogeneous environment and highly dynamic inundation area.
This presents significant challenges in using traditional means to
measure its bottom topography. However, we took advantage of these
characteristics and used frequent and synoptic MODIS measurements
to develop a novel approach of mapping its bottom topography and
studying inter-annual changes in topographic features. Two new
findings can be summarized below.
First, the synoptic and frequent MODIS measurements were
combined with point measurements of water levels to derive bottom
topography during each year between 2000 and 2009. The resulting
maps were qualitatively validated using historical data and other
ancillary data. The consistency between the 10 annual maps also
implies relative accuracy, with an error bound of 0.49 m. We believe
that this is the first time remote-sensing based bottom topography
maps have been derived for such a complex environment. The
resulting topographic maps will have significant inter-disciplinary
implications such as helping to improve water circulation models and
implement management regulations.
Second, significant inter-annual variability of the bottom topog-
raphy between 2000 and 2009 was found. In every year, more lake's
bottom area was found to have elevation increases than decreases,
and an overall increasing trend was found in the lake's mean elevation
from 2000 to 2009 (0.023 m yr − 1, statistically insignificant). Thus, on
average, Poyang Lake became shallower during the 10-year study
period. Such changes can be well explained by the combined effects of
human activities and weather patterns. These include abnormal
precipitation in 2002, the impoundment of the Three Gorges Dam in
2003, excessive (and often ill-organized) sand-dredging activities, as
well as the construction of levees.
The findings here have significant implications to research and
management. Numerical circulation models require bottom topographic
2740 L. Feng et al. / Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011) 2729–2741
data for boundary conditions, which are mostly lacking or out of date for
Poyang Lake. Wetland management requires accurate knowledge about
the lake's water budget. Ship navigation needs accurate bathymetric
data, which are impossible to obtain without knowing the bottom
topography and the changing water level. The derived bottom
topographic maps, with annual updates, will provide critical information
to all these applications.
The study here demonstrated a novel use of MODIS data to derive
bottom topography in a complex environment and the new findings
from the derived maps. Given the continuous MODIS measurements,
as well as ongoing and future satellite missions for Earth observing,
these new findings provide baseline information to understand
environmental changes and their connections with weather events,
human activities, as well as long-term climate change. Finally, because
of the free availability of most satellite data, for other similar lakes
with highly dynamic inundation changes, the approach outlined here
can be easily extended to provide critical topographic information
that is otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the Major State Basic Research
Development Program of China (2009CB723905), National Natural
Science Foundation of China (41071261, 41021061 and 40906092), the
U.S. NASA Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program and Water and
Energy Cycle Program, Water Project funded by the Ministry of Water
Resources (201001054), the Self-research program for Doctoral
Candidates (including Mphil-PhD) of Wuhan University in 2008. We
thank NASA/GSFC for providing MODIS data and China Meteorological
Data Sharing Service System for providing meteorological data. We also
thank the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments and
suggestions.
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