INVESTIGATING WATER STORAGE CHANGES IN IRAN USING GRACE AND CHIRPS DATA IN THE GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE SYSTEM

Abstract. Water storage in regions with the weather hot and arid or semi-arid such as Iran have many uses. Including these water storage, can be referred to groundwater. Groundwater is one of the sources of sweet waters in the world, and one of the factors is economical and social development. Hence, monitoring its changes in water resources management is of great importance. On the other hand, precipitation is one of the factors directly affecting the water storage level and groundwater level changes. In this study, water storage changes with GRACE satellite data and total annual precipitation with CHIRPS data in the Google Earth Engine system investigated for Iran during 2003–2017. The results obtained from the GRACE satellite data indicate over 10 cm reducing of the water storage levels in Iran during the period between 2008 to 2017. Also, the chart obtained from the CHIRPS data for the total annual precipitation shows that the amount of rainfall since 2008 has decreased in this region.