Evaluating D-InSAR performance to detect small water level fluctuations in two small lakes in Sweden

Abstract Monitoring lake water level fluctuations is critical for managing water resources, predicting the impacts of climatic change, and preserving ecosystem services lakes provide. However, traditional gauging stations are insufficient to monitor all lakes worldwide due to the large number of existing lakes, the challenges of installation and maintenance, and the remote locations of some. Although satellite altimetry is an alternative for measuring water levels, it cannot monitor small lakes effectively. This study evaluates the potential of Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (D-InSAR) for tracking minor water level changes in small lakes, a method more typically used in wetland studies. We investigate two Swedish lakes using Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B data from 2019, generating six-day interferograms and filtering out those with in situ water level changes exceeding one phase cycle. Our results show that D-InSAR can detect small water level changes with Lin’s correlations up to 0.63 and 0.89 and RMSE values of approximately 9 and 4 mm, respectively. These results evidence the potential of future L-band SAR missions with larger wavelengths, such as the NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), to track water level changes in lakes and aid water tracking missions such as the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography).