GRACE Observations for Global Groundwater Storage Analysis

A special issue of Hydrology (ISSN 2306-5338).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 428

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Civil and Construction Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Interests: groundwater; sustainability; remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission was launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2002 and continued with the GRACE – Follow On (GRACE-FO) mission in 2018, which is ongoing. The GRACE mission uses a pair of satellites to measure changes in the Earth’s gravitational field that are caused by changes in water storage. These water storage anomalies can be combined with other datasets to derive estimates in groundwater storage changes. GRACE data offer a unique opportunity to perform groundwater storage analysis to assess regional groundwater sustainability and to study the impacts of climate change. GRACE data can have a high degree of uncertainty due to “leakage” and other issues arising from the coarse resolution of the raw GRACE data. However, GRACE data provide researchers with a unique tool for analyzing a variety of important research questions without having to rely on in situ data, which can be expensive and difficult to obtain, particularly in developing countries.

The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight unique and creative applications of GRACE data to address research questions related to global groundwater storage, including the impact of climate change and to provide a venue to characterize case studies and describe groundwater use, management, and planning for specific regions.

  • Groundwater storage analysis in data-sparse regions;
  • Climate change impacts on groundwater storage;
  • Regional groundwater sustainability;
  • Downscaling GRACE-derived groundwater storage data;
  • GRACE-assimilated groundwater storage analysis methods;
  • Validation techniques for GRACE-derived groundwater storage estimates;
  • Uncertainty analysis of GRACE-derived groundwater storage;
  • Assessing the impact of leakage on GRACE-derived groundwater storage estimates;
  • New tools or algorithms for processing GRACE data;
  • Characterizing regional historical groundwater storage using GRACE;
  • Groundwater management using GRACE data case studies.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Remote Sensing.

Dr. Norman L. Jones
Dr. Gustavious Paul Williams
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Hydrology is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • groundwater sustainability
  • GRACE
  • groundwater storage trends
  • groundwater management

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

16 pages, 21540 KiB  
Article
Responses of Terrestrial Water Storage to Climate Change in the Closed Alpine Qaidam Basin
by Liang Chang, Qunhui Zhang, Xiaofan Gu, Rui Duan, Qian Wang and Xiangzhi You
Hydrology 2025, 12(5), 105; https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology12050105 - 28 Apr 2025
Viewed by 155
Abstract
Terrestrial water storage (TWS) in the Qaidam Basin in western China is highly sensitive to climate change. The GRACE mascon products provide variations of TWS anomalies (TWSAs), greatly facilitating the exploration of water storage dynamics. However, the main meteorological factors affecting the TWSA [...] Read more.
Terrestrial water storage (TWS) in the Qaidam Basin in western China is highly sensitive to climate change. The GRACE mascon products provide variations of TWS anomalies (TWSAs), greatly facilitating the exploration of water storage dynamics. However, the main meteorological factors affecting the TWSA dynamics in this region need to be comprehensively investigated. In this study, variations in TWSAs over the Qaidam Basin from 2002 to 2024 were analyzed using three GRACE mascon products with CSR, JPL, and GSFC. The groundwater storage anomalies (GWAs) were extracted through GRACE and GLDAS products. The impact of meteorological elements on TWSAs and GWAs was identified. The results showed that the GRACE mascon products showed a significant increasing trend with a rate of 0.51 ± 0.13 mm per month in TWSAs across the entire basin from 2003 to 2016. The groundwater part accounted for the largest proportion and was the main contributor to the increase in TWS for the entire basin. In addition to the dominant role of precipitation, other meteorological elements, particularly air humidity and solar radiation, were also identified as important contributors to TWSA and GWA variations. This study highlighted the climatic effect on water storage variations, which have important implications for local water resource management and ecological conservation under ongoing climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue GRACE Observations for Global Groundwater Storage Analysis)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop