MASTERS CANDIDATE
Mr LIU Song

Estimation of Reservoir Storage in the Pearl River Basin

In order to utilize the rich water resource in the Pearl River, more than 9 000 registered dams have been built in the entire basin since 1950s. The total storage capacity of the reservoirs has been estimated to be about 65 km3, which is 23% of the annual water discharge of the Pearl River. However, this estimate is only made based on the registered dams thus doesn’t indicate the total reservoir in terms of capacity; furthermore, the estimate excludes the sediment deposition during decadal operation. This number needs verifying and updating with current accurate data. Additionally, government data only cover large and medium-sized reservoirs with reservoir names and construction date, lacking basic geographic locations or storage volume, which indicates there is a necessity to develop a complete reservoir dataset populated accommodating the location, storage as well as other characteristics.

Conventional estimation of reservoir storage such as hydrographic survey takes huge amount of manpower, time and cost. Remote sensing based method, however, provides new approach to estimating storage. The proposed study aims to develop a new method of synchronous and large-scale estimation on reservoir storage with acceptable accuracy particularly in a large catchment-the Pearl River Basin, based on remote sensing techniques. Three objectives are to be achieved as research results:

• To investigate the distribution of reservoir in the Pearl River Basin

• To estimate the reservoir storage in the Pearl River Basin

• To develop the Pearl River Basin Reservoir database