Quantification of Groundwater Storage Variations and Stressed Areas Using Multi-temporal GRACE Data: A Case Study of Upper Indus Plains, Pakistan M. Amin, M. R. Khan, and Ahsan Jamil Abstract Groundwater is depleting at a more rapid rate than its replenishment in Indus Basin due to increased demand attributed to urbanization, inef ficient water management practices especially in the agricultural sector and increase in impervious area in the name of development that can expose the country to severe challenge in the future. Through an unregulated groundwater exploitation now farmers often meet inadequacy in surface water supplies. The concurrent use of surface water and groundwater water now takes place on more than 70% of irrigated lands. Therefore, water resources should be monitored on frequent intervals to sensitize policy makers to formulate an optimal framework for water management practices. This study assessed the competence of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Satellite (GRACE)—based esti- mation of changes in Ground Water Storage (GWS) as a substitute approach for groundwater quantitative approx- imation for management of groundwater resources in the Indus basin. The GRACE satellite Total Water Storage (TWS) data from 2011 to 2015 was used to calculate GWS. A common reduction trend was seen in the Upper Indus Plain (UIP) where the average net loss of ground- water was observed to be 1701.39 km 3 of water amid 2011–2015. A net loss of around 0.34 km 3 /year ground- water storage was deduced for the UIP where flooding in 2014 assumed a fundamental part in natural replenish- ment of groundwater aquifer of the UIP. In view of TWS varieties three out of four doabs Bari, Rachna, Thal demonstrated a decrease in groundwater capacity though Chaj doab brought about increment of 0.09 km 3 . Based on this study, GRACE-Tellus satellite data is competent enough to hint for groundwater storage variations, however there is a vibrant need to calibrate GRACE-Tellus data with hydrological stations data periodically in order to take a maximum advantage for utility of GRACE to monitor groundwater variations on regional scale. Future studies should focus on this aspect. Index Terms Hydrology Á GIS Á Groundwater Á GRACE Á Indus Á Remote sensing 1 Introduction The imbalance between groundwater resource utilization and recharge has prompted water table to go down at an alarming rate according to past studies due to which several issues like insuf ficient water for agricultural use, groundwater siltation and land subsidence take place. The groundwater stressed areas need to be delineated on an optimal temporal scale to sensitize policy makers to develop strategies of water man- agement practices on appropriate time groundwater and place. The Indus Basin has a vast groundwater aquifer that covers 16.2 million ha (hectare) [1]. Groundwater is pumped with the help of tube wells, currently numbered at 0.9 mil- lion and 87% of these are run on diesel, making groundwater pumping impractical during Pakistan’s frequent periods of power shortfall [2]. Since downstream is likely to continue to increase, precise hydrological projections for the future supply are important. The water resources supplied by the Upper Indus Basin (UIB) are essential to millions of people and future changes in both demand and supply may have large impacts [3]. The UIB provides water for the world’s largest continuous irrigation scheme through several large reservoirs (e.g. the Tarbela and Mangla dams. Water demands are high, primarily because of water consumption by irrigated agriculture, and hydropower generation. At the same time, the downstream part of the basin is characterized by very dry conditions, making it predominantly dependent on water supply from the upstream areas. The downstream demands exceed the supply and on an annual basis, M. Amin (&) Á M. R. Khan Á A. Jamil Institute of Geo-Information & Earth Observation, Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan e-mail: m.amin@uaar.edu.pk © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 H. M. El-Askary et al. (eds.), Advances in Remote Sensing and Geo Informatics Applications, Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01440-7_68 299