Assessment of Shardara Reservoir siltation during 1999–2021 using satellite data (Syrdarya River, Kazakhstan)
Спутниковые оценки процессов заиливания Шардаринского водохранилища в период 1999–2021 гг. (река Сырдарья, Казахстан)
Abayev N.N. Sagatdinova G.N. Maglinets Yu.A. Terekhov A.G.
2022Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Sovremennye Problemy Distantsionnogo Zondirovaniya Zemli iz Kosmosa
2022#19Issue 5210 - 221 pp.
The Shardara Reservoir (Kazakhstan) with a volume of 5.2 km3, built in 1967 on the Syrdarya River in the Aral Sea basin, is the last in the chain of the Naryn-Syrdarya cascade of hydroelectric power plants. The lower, flat part of the river basin is composed of loess-like sandy loams and loams. This leads, due to the erosion of the riverbed, to the formation of a significant runoff of suspended and bottom sediments in the Syrdarya River, which enter into the Shardara Reservoir bed. The Reservoir operates in irrigation mode and is triggered almost annually below the dead volume horizon. In this case, a significant part of the Reservoir bottom is drained and satellite diagnostics of long-term changes in its relief becomes possible, which is associated with the activity of silting processes. Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-7 ETM+ and Landsat-8 OLI data of two periods: 1999–2002 (13 scenes) and 2020–2021 (21 scenes) were used to monitor the distribution of the Reservoir water mirror at different water levels The Normalized Water Difference Index (NDWI) was used to recognize the Reservoir water mirror. The shorelines altitude was equated to the average daily water level altitude in the Reservoir, registered at the RSE Kazhydromet hydro station, ID-16910 (Res. Shardara–Shardara city) on the day of the satellite overpass. Changes in the distribution of the Reservoir water mirror at various water levels that occurred over 20 years allowed us to assess the activity of the processes of silting of the Reservoir bottom. As a result of the conducted research, multidirectional silting trends were registered. Changes in the Reservoir water regime, and in particular, the construction in 2011 of an additional irrigation canal with water intake in the southeastern part of the Reservoir, led to the erosion of a part of river sediments in this zone. In general, the silting degree of the periodically drained bottom of the Shardara Reservoir over the past 20 years has turned out to be insignificant, only (+4.4 cm), which corresponds to the rate of accumulation of river sediments of 1.3±0.5 million m3 per year. Apparently, this is facilitated by the technical possibility and regular practice of triggering the Reservoir below the horizon of the dead volume, as well as the construction of a machine channel pumping water and suspensions from the upper part of the Reservoir.
Landsat , remote sensing , reservoir silting , river sediments , shoreline position
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Institute of Information and Computational Technologies, Almaty, 050010, Kazakhstan
RSE Kazhydromet, Almaty, 050022, Kazakhstan
SibFU Institute of Space and Information Technologies, Krasnoyarsk, 660074, Russian Federation
Institute of Information and Computational Technologies
RSE Kazhydromet
SibFU Institute of Space and Information Technologies
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