Relationships Between Satellite Observed Lit Area and Water Footprints

Naizhuo Zhao (), Tilottama Ghosh, Nathan Currit and Christopher Elvidge

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2011, vol. 25, issue 9, 2250 pages

Abstract: Global water resources are vulnerable to depletion due to the increasing demand of an ever-increasing human population. A country’s water footprint is a measure of the total volume of water needed to produce the goods and services consumed by the country, including water originating beyond its own borders. The water footprint can be a critical indicator of global water resource use, but its practical application is hindered by a lack of comparable data across national boundaries. The purpose of this article is to test the applicability of the nighttime imagery products produced by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) for the assessment of the global water footprint. To accomplish this purpose, the average areal extent of nighttime lighting (lit area) is calculated from 1997 to 2001. Next, lit area is regressed on the total water footprint for each country, as indicated by the Water Footprint Network (WFN), to estimate that country’s total water footprint using nighttime imagery. Model residuals are analyzed at the national scale to understand the appropriateness of nighttime imagery for assessing water consumption. Results indicate strong positive correlations between lit area and total water footprint (TWF), domestic water withdrawal (DWW), and industrial water consumption (IWC) at the national scale. Overall, the analyses reveal that the rate of agricultural water consumption to total water footprint (AWCR) and population density can affect the precision of estimates when lit area is selected as a proxy to estimate water footprints. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Keywords: Water footprint; Nighttime satellite image; Rate of agricultural water consumption to total water footprint (AWCR); Population density; Gross domestic product (GDP) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1007/s11269-011-9804-3

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