JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, B08407, doi:10.

1029/2009JB007018, 2010

Modeling Earth deformation from monsoonal flooding in Bangladesh using hydrographic, GPS, and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data
Michael S. Steckler,1 Scott L. Nooner,1 S. Humayun Akhter,2 Sazedul K. Chowdhury,3 Srinivas Bettadpur,4 Leonardo Seeber,1 and Mikhail G. Kogan1
Received 1 October 2009; revised 10 March 2010; accepted 5 April 2010; published 21 August 2010.

[1] The Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers converge in Bangladesh with an annual discharge second to the Amazon. Most of the flow occurs during the summer monsoon causing widespread flooding. The impounded water represents a large surface load whose effects can be observed in Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GPS data. Bangladesh is at the center of the second largest seasonal anomaly in the GRACE gravity field, reflecting water storage in Southeast Asia. Eighteen continuous GPS stations in Bangladesh record seasonal vertical motions up to 6 cm that inversely correlate to river level. We use 304 river gages to compute water height surfaces with a digital elevation model to separate surface water from groundwater. Porosity of 20% was used to estimate groundwater mass and calculate the water load. Results show 100 GT of water are stored in Bangladesh (7.5% of annual discharge) but can reach 150 GT during extreme events. The calculated water mass agrees with monthly GRACE water mass equivalents from Bangladesh within statistical limits. We compute the deformation due to this water load on an elastic half space, and we vary Youngs modulus to fit GPS data from our two most continuous records. The water loading can account for >50% of the variance in the GPS data. The best fitting Youngs modulus is 117124 GPa for DHAK and 133135 GPa for SUST, although the upper bound is not well constrained. These estimates lie between sediment (3075 GPa) and mantle (190 GPa) values, indicating that response to loading is sensitive to structure throughout the lithosphere and is not absorbed by the weak sediments.
Citation: Steckler, M. S., S. L. Nooner, S. H. Akhter, S. K. Chowdhury, S. Bettadpur, L. Seeber, and M. G. Kogan (2010), Modeling Earth deformation from monsoonal flooding in Bangladesh using hydrographic, GPS, and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data, J. Geophys. Res., 115, B08407, doi:10.1029/2009JB007018.

1. Introduction
[2] The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers converge in Bangladesh to create a river system with a mean annual discharge second only to the Amazon. The vast majority of the flow for these rivers occurs during the summer when immense monsoonal rainfall throughout the drainage area causes widespread flooding in the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta (GBD) (Figure 1). In a typical year 2030% of Bangladesh, which occupies most of the GBD, is submerged. In an extreme year, 2/3 of the country can be underwater. The mass of this impounded water represents a large load on the surface of the earth that can be readily observed in both the Gravity
1 Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Earth Institute at Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA. 2 Department of Geology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 3 Bangladesh Water Development Board, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 4 Center for Space Research, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA.

Copyright 2010 by the American Geophysical Union. 0148 0227/10/2009JB007018

Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite gravity field and in the vertical component of GPS surface deformation measurements (S. H. Akhter et al., manuscript in preparation, 2010). It is the second largest seasonal anomaly in the GRACE gravity field, reflecting terrestrial water storage in Southeast Asia centered over the GBD. The observed vertical GPS signals show a 56 cm seasonal anomaly that is inversely correlated to river level and discharge; the mass of water stored as additional groundwater and surface floodwaters causes a downward deflection of the surface each summer. This vertical deformation seen in the GPS, together with water level and GRACE data can be used to obtain information about the elastic properties of the underlying lithosphere. [3] Similar GRACE and GPS signals have been observed in the Amazon River Basin and have been modeled as elastic loading [Davis et al., 2004; Bevis et al., 2005]. However, they had to deal with very limited GPS and water level data in the sparsely populated Amazon Rain forest. In contrast, Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities in the world (>1080 people/km2) and monitoring and management of the countrys water resources, including flood
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Figure 1. Map of the Bangladesh region showing pervasive flooding along the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. Discharge of the rivers increase by over an order of magnitude between the winter dry season and the summer monsoon, causing widespread annual flooding. Much of the most extensive annual flooding is in Bangladesh, which contains most of the low lying Ganges Brahmaputra Delta. The area of flooding is well delimited by the Shillong Plateau on the north, the Burma Arc foldbelt on the east, the Bay of Bengal on the south and the Indian craton on the west. C, Cachar; SWBD, STRM water body data. Image from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (http://www.dartmouth.edu/floods). control and drainage, irrigation, river navigation and riverbank protection are central to the economy of Bangladesh. Thus, the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) (http://www.bwdb.gov.bd/) maintains an extensive network of river and groundwater monitoring stations. We use data from 304 river gages distributed throughout the country to determine the fluctuating load of water stored within Bangladesh for the period 20032007. We compare this water load to the monthly water mass estimates from GRACE satellite gravity. Moreover, we established 6 continuous GPS sites in Bangladesh in 2003 and an additional 12 sites in early 2007 (S. H. Akhter et al., manuscript in preparation, 2010). These sites all show a large seasonal vertical signal that is inverted with respect to the water load. The ground moves downward in the summer, consistent with a depression of the land by the weight of the water. At annual timescales, the earth responds elastically to imposed loads [Wahr et al., 2004; Bevis et al., 2005]. We model the deformation as the surface deflection of an elastic half space in response to the seasonal flooding load [Becker and Bevis, 2004]. We vary Youngs modulus to determine the best fitting average elastic properties of the lithosphere beneath Bangladesh. We focus on the two of our GPS sites with the longest and most continuous signal for the modeling. While vertical motion in GPS stations from seasonal hydrology has been noted in numerous places, this is only the second use of this type of data to estimate elastic properties.

2. Background
2.1. Water and Flooding in Bangladesh [4] The Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers are the fourth and fifth largest rivers in the world in terms of water discharge and together drain most of the front and back of the Himalayan Mountains, a drainage area of 1.6 106 km2. While this is only ranked thirteenth in drainage basin size, they discharge, together with the smaller Meghna River, 1.35 1012 m3/yr into the Indian Ocean. The sediment carried by these rivers has built the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta (GBD), the largest in the world. The fertile delta covers the southern halves of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal:

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Figure 2. (top) Google Earth image juxtaposing dry and wet season satellite images of the area around Jamalganj, Sylhet, in NE Bangladesh. The location of the image is indicated by the red box in Figure 7. The Sylhet Basin experiences widespread flooding during the summer months. The upper part of the image shows that dry land consists primarily of elevated levees along the rivers while most of the countryside is submerged. This contrasts with the dry season (lower part of the image) when the land is dotted with open fields and lakes or swampy areas known as beels. The icon indicates the location of a continuous GPS site at Jamalganj (JAML) established in 2007. (bottom) Hydrograph of a river monitoring station at Sunamganj, on the Surma River about 18 km NE of the site JAML. It shows up to 8 m annual water level fluctuations on the Surma River. a 300 300 km area with a population of more than 200 million people. [5] The Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers are highly seasonal due to heavy rainfall throughout the drainage basin during the summer. The orographic effect at the corner of the Himalaya and Burma Arc further increases rainfall. The spring snowmelt in the mountains also compounds the effect, especially for the Brahmaputra. The resulting flow during the summer (JuneJulyAugust) accounts for 80 90% of the Ganges flow and 95% of the Brahmaputra flow

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Figure 3. Example of flooding in Bangladesh during the summer of 2004. Images are a NASA Aqua MODIS image from July 13 and a Bangladesh Environmental Monitoring Information Network (EMIN) assessment of flooding on 23 July from RADARSAT ScanSAR (http://www.bwdb.gov.bd/flood_2004. htm). Approximately 38% of Bangladesh was inundated affecting 36 million people and killing almost 800 [Best et al., 2007]. [Subramanian and Ramanathan, 1996]. The discharge of the rivers increases by over an order of magnitude in the summer monsoon. Under peak flow conditions, summer discharge can reach 1520 times the minimum winter flow. This extreme flow exceeds the carrying capacity of the rivers, causing widespread flooding. The most extensive annual flooding occurs in Bangladesh in the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta (Figure 1). The area of flooding in the GBD is well delimited by the Shillong Plateau on the north, the Burma Arc foldbelt on the east, the Bay of Bengal on the south and the Indian craton on the west. In an average year, 2030% of Bangladesh is flooded during the monsoon, primarily in low lying fields. However, in the extreme floods of 1988 and 1998, 63% and 69% of the country was submerged [Mirza, 2003] causing widespread devastation. [6] The population has adapted to this environment by building villages on the local high ground, commonly on top of active or abandoned river levees. Figure 2 shows an example of the landscape and adaptation in the Sylhet Basin, an area that experiences widespread flooding every year. In the dry season the land is dotted with open agricultural fields and lakes or swampy areas known as beels with villages located on the high ground along rivers. In the wet season, all of the low low lying rice fields are submerged, but the elevated roads and villages remain dry. The flood danger level is reached when an unusually high river level overtops the levees, flooding the elevated towns and roads. However, each year some part of the country will experience higher than average flood levels displacing the local population. For instance, in 2004, heavy rains led to inundation of 38% of Bangladesh (Figure 3) affecting 36 million people and damaging or destroying almost 2.4 million houses [Best et al., 2007]. 2.2. Tectonic Setting [7] The GBD lies at the cusp between the Himalayan collision zone, the Burma Arc subduction zone, and the Indian craton [Le Dain et al., 1984; Alam et al., 2003; Steckler et al., 2008] and is the largest collision related delta (e.g., Indus, Orinoco; Tigris Euphrates). The Burma Arc on the eastern side of the GBD is the continuation of the Sumatra Andaman subduction zone, which ruptured in the M9.3 2004 earthquake [Lay et al., 2005]. This plate boundary is colliding with the 1520 km thick sediment pile of the GBD and as a result has developed a large accretionary wedge of folded and faulted sediment that has advanced halfway across the delta (Figure 4). Due to high sedimentation rates in the GBD, the deformation front is buried by the delta and its position is uncertain [Steckler et al., 2008]. [8] On the northern side, the Shillong Plateau is a 2000 m high uplifted basement block separated from the GBD by the Dauki Fault (Figure 4). The adjacent low lying Sylhet Basin is a flexural basin related to the Shillong. Recent GPS data [Jade et al., 2007] suggest the Shillong Plateau may represent a forward jump of the Himalayan front (L. Seeber et al., manuscript in preparation, 2010). The Dauki Fault juxtaposes uplifting basement rock with a subsiding 8+ km wedge of Neogene sediments [Raman et al., 1990; Mitra et al., 2005]. [9] The western margin of the GBD is the Indian craton. The edge of the craton is the Early Cretaceous passive margin of India [Ramana et al., 1994; Acharyya, 1998]. The hinge zone of this margin (Figure 4) is marked by the shallow water Sylhet Limestone delimiting the pre delta Eocene paleoshelf. It runs NNE from near Calcutta to the edge of the Shillong Plateau (Figure 2), paralleling the current shelf edge along the Indian continental margin to the south. The

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Figure 4. Topographic map of the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta (GBD) region. The GBD is bounded by the Indian Shield, Shillong Plateau, Burma Arc and the continental margin. The borders of Bangladesh are indicated by the red line. Thrust boundaries are marked by black lines with ticks on the upper plate, dashed where uncertain. The Hinge Zone, marking the transition from thick continental crust to thinned continental or ocean crust, is noted by the dashed gray line. Our continuous GPS stations are indicated by red triangles (permanent, installed in 2003) or red circles (temporary, deployed in 2007). The stations at Dhaka (DHAK) and Sylhet (SUST) used for the analysis are labeled. The yellow inverted triangles show the locations of the seismic stations whose receiver function [Mitra et al., 2005, 2008] were used to estimate Youngs modulus versus depth. M, Meghna River; O.B., Old Brahmaputra River. Sylhet Limestone drops by over 4 km across the 25 km wide hinge zone of the margin [Alam, 1989]. NW of the hinge zone basement is relatively shallow (12 km [Lindsay et al., 1991; Alam et al., 2003]), indicating the presence of thick continental crust. East of the hinge zone the great thickness of sediments indicates that the crust is significantly thinned or oceanic. Total sediment thickness beneath the GBD southeast of the hinge zone exceeds 16 km and the depth to basement may be as large as the 22 km estimated offshore [Curray, 1991]. This great sediment thickness implies thin crust, but the position of the ocean/continent boundary is not known. It is often associated with a NESW trending gravity high that parallels the hinge zone. Mitra et al. [2008], using receiver functions at a station just over the Indian border in Tripura (Figure 4), detected the presence of a thin high velocity layer interpreted to be oceanic crust. [10] The seismic velocities and other elastic properties of the deep Bengal Basin beneath the GBD are virtually unknown. There are a few studies of the crust landward of the hinge zone in West Bengal [Kaila et al., 1992; Reddy et al., 1998; Mitra et al., 2008] and NW Bangladesh [Noor Islam and Shamsul Arefin, 1995]. On the eastern side of the Bengal Basin along the foldbelt in India, Mitra et al. [2005, 2008] used receiver functions to determine S wave velocity profiles indicating 2025 km of sediment overlying a 15 20 km thick crust. The shear velocity profiles from these seismic stations provide the only data on the elastic properties at depth beneath the Bengal Basin.

3. Data
3.1. GPS [11] We are currently operating 18 continuous GPS stations in Bangladesh (Figure 4). Six permanent Trimble SSEs were installed in 2003 by Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and Dhaka University. We installed an addi-

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Figure 5. Daily GPS time series of the vertical position of stations (top) DHAK (Dhaka) and (middle) SUST (Sylhet) with 1 standard deviation. Daily observations were processed by GAMIT software [King and Bock, 2009]. Ellipsoid heights converted to elevation using the EGM96 geoid. Rates are for best fitting straight line calculated by GLOBK [Herring et al., 2008]. The vertical component shows a strong seasonal signal from the monsoon similar to the river level and river discharge. (bottom) The uncertainty for each daily measurement at the two sites, which exhibits a season signal that is not aligned with the deflection cyclicity. tional 12 Trimble NetRS stations in 2007 with UNAVCO assistance to further investigate the tectonics of the Burma Arc foldbelt and Shillong Plateau. All data will be archived by UNAVCO. All antennas were installed on roofs of older buildings using stainless steel threaded rods cemented into the reinforced concrete structures. The old buildings provide stable monuments in a country where basement outcrop is generally unavailable. The buildings are on local unflooded high ground. Daily observations were processed using the GAMIT software [King and Bock, 2009] together with 9 stations of IGS. Each daily GAMIT solution vector and associated covariance matrix were combined by GLOBK software [Herring et al., 2008] with a daily solution for a global IGS network performed at MIT. Daily position components are estimated in the ITRF2000 reference frame. Daily uncertainties for the north, east and up components average 2.8, 3.4 and 10.6 mm at DHAK and 3.0, 3.6 and 11.2 mm at SUST. Observed horizontal motion is in general agreement with motion of Indian plate; complete analyses of the GPS results will be presented in a separate paper (S. H. Akhter et al., manuscript in preparation, 2010). The present paper focuses on the vertical (i.e., radial) component that shows a strong seasonal deflection as large as 6 cm of the ground surface superimposed upon a long term trend (subsidence for most stations) attributed to tectonics and, in some cases, groundwater extraction. The 12 stations installed in 2007 did not have sufficient data overlapping the water level records, so we do not use those in this study. Of the remaining six stations, only two (DHAK and SUST) provide time series through the end of 2007 that are complete enough to observe several continuous cycles of seasonal ground deflection (Figure 5). Problems in equipment maintenance limited the other sites to discontinuous records that are sufficient to estimate long term rates, but do not provide a good record of the seasonal cycles. Therefore we focus our modeling on the DHAK and SUST stations, which provide an excellent record of the surface motion and the best constraints for determining the loading response and consequently lithospheric properties. [12] Possible sources of errors in the GPS positions include atmospheric effects, such as the estimation of the tropospheric zenith delay (TZD) due to moisture in the atmosphere. We perform Kalman filtering with the routine SOLVK in GAMIT/GLOBK to estimate zenith delays and their

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Figure 6. Our study area is small relative to the GRACE footprint (300 km). (a) Consequently, GRACE mass load estimates were projected to the region of interest using two candidate geographic masks shown in yellow and blue. (b and c) For projecting the GRACE estimates, we used spherical harmonic representations of the two masks. (d) The monthly equivalent water thicknesses for each of the masks. Dots are scaled with the radius equal to the one sigma errors for each mask (1.6 cm for mask A and 2.1 cm for mask B). uncertainties using piecewise linear estimates for the TZD every 2 h. Figure 5 shows that uncertainties in the daily GPS positions show a seasonal cyclicity with increased uncertainty during the humid pre monsoon and monsoon season (AprilSeptember) when atmospheric moisture is highest. We conclude that any systematic error in the magnitude of the TZD corrections on the vertical GPS positions would correlate with the monsoonal moisture and the calculated uncertainties. However, this is not aligned with the season signal of the vertical motion that exhibits maximums and minimums in April and September. Essentially, the vertical motion is proportional to the integral of the precipitation in the drainage area and thus 90 out of phase. The increased uncertainty corresponds to the falling limb of the vertical GPS cyclicity and the more precise estimates to the rising limb. Thus, as was concluded for the analysis of seasonal cyclicity seen farther north on the Nepalese Himalaya [Flouzat et al., 2009], tropospheric delay errors cannot explain the seasonal signal at the stations. 3.2. GRACE [13] The Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE), a joint U.S./German global gravity field mapping mission, was launched in March 2002. Since that time, GRACE has provided continuous measurements of the global mass flux at seasonal and longer time scales, with spatial resolutions of 300 km or longer [Tapley et al., 2004]. The GRACE mission data products are a time sequence of approximately monthly global gravity field estimates (S. Bettadpur, Level 2 gravity field product user handbook, Report GRACE 327734, revision 2.3, 20 February 2007, available from GRACE data products archive at http:// podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/grace, hereafter cited as S. Bettadpur, GRACE report, 2007), and these represent primarily the time variability in the distribution of surface and groundwater, ice, and oceans. The area centered on Bangladesh shows the second largest seasonal anomaly (after the Amazon basin), but the area of large hydrological variability extends beyond Bangladesh. [14] We estimated the hydrological mass load from the GRACE data by projecting the monthly global gravity field anomalies to the region of interest using two candidate geographical masks (Figure 6a). As input to this process, we used a time series of regularized, monthly GRACE gravity field estimates, to spherical harmonic degree 120 [Save, 2009]. This time series was derived as part of efforts at CSR to reduce the errors in standard Release 04 (S. Bettadpur, GRACE report, 2007) GRACE data products. This regularized time series has the same signal content as the standard RL 04 products, but has smaller errors [Save, 2009]. No other post processing was done on the regularized gravity field estimates. The mass load, or the water storage

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change, over an adopted geographical region, or a basin, can be represented by the thickness of a layer of water uniformly spread across this basin. The thickness of this water layer can be calculated by projecting the spherical harmonic, monthly gravity field anomalies on to a spherical harmonic representation of the basin [e.g., Swenson and Wahr, 2002]. [15] Two such geographical masks were used in this study (Figure 6a). The first mask covers a rectangular shaped area of 6 7 centered on Bangladesh. The second mask approximates, using 0.25 0.25 cells, a shape encompassing the spatial distribution of the water gages used in this study. Global maps with 0.25 0.25 cells were generated, with a value of 1 inside the mask, and value 0 outside. The spherical harmonic decomposition of each map to spherical harmonic degree 120 was computed, to match with the resolution of the monthly gravity field estimates. The effect of truncation of the mask at degree 120 is shown in Figures 6b and 6c for the two reconstructions of the candidate masks. [16] For each month, the residual, or anomalous gravity field, was calculated relative to the long term average of the monthly gravity fields. The spherical harmonics of the residual gravity field were multiplied by the harmonics of the masks, thereby giving the mass load anomaly over the defined basin, in units of thickness of water layer. The error bounds were calculated by projecting the errors in the monthly gravity field spherical harmonic coefficients to the two masks. The errors in the coefficients were defined as residuals from a weighted least squares fit of single mean, slope, and harmonics at annual, semi annual, 161 day and 1400 day periods to each harmonic coefficient over the entire data span. The annual and semi annual harmonics account for globally the largest visible natural seasonal variability in the water cycle. The 161 day and 1400 day periods account for a known alias due to the semi diurnal S2 and K2 tides, respectively. The residual errors account for residual random noise or systematic errors over the data span. They also contain potentially any inter seasonal or sub seasonal natural variability in the water cycle, and hence the error estimates above should be regarded as noise upper bounds. [17] The two time series of monthly equivalent water thickness anomalies for the two basins are shown in Figure 6d. The time series show that the large seasonal fluctuations in the water storage peak in September. The amplitude from the finer mask (mask B) is about 1/3 larger than for the larger mask (mask A). Geometric calculations using the two masks indicate that the average amplitude of the fluctuations in Bangladesh (mask B) average about 70% larger than in the surrounding region (yellow region in Figure 6a). 3.3. River Gage [18] We obtained daily measurements from 304 river gage stations from the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) spanning January 2003 through December 2007 (Figure 7). This remarkable data set was collected by the BWDB by manually recording the value at each gage station multiple times every day. Our data set consists of the daily 0900 LT measurements. The raw data comprised over 550,000 river level values. We manually corrected or removed bad data points, often due to typographical transcription errors.

[19] Varied patterns of water level fluctuations (Figure 7) can be seen throughout the country, ranging from flashy, rapid changes near high topography, to slow smooth variations on major rivers, to tidal dominated fluctuations near the coast. Consistent patterns are observed regionally and along drainage systems. Effects of river management can be seen at a few stations. Annual water level cycle amplitudes range from less than 2 m near the coast to as much as 12 m in the northeastern corner of Bangladesh. We note that when rivers reach the flood stage and overtop their banks, the water primarily spreads laterally and the water level increases more slowly. Thus the height of the water level peak does not directly reflect the increase in discharge and water volume. The flood danger levels for some stations are indicated on Figure 7. The 104 tidal stations show a fortnightly cycle due to aliasing by the daily sampling. The more upstream tidal stations along the Meghna River system are tidal during low flow in the winter, but the tidal limit moves downstream under the higher summer flow. We fit the amplitude and phase of the O1, K1, N2, and M2 tidal constituents to the tidal stations and subtracted the results from each of the time series. The 12 h constituent, S2, was not needed since the water level data was sampled every 24 h.

4. Analysis and Modeling

[20] For this paper we assume that vertical motions that we observe on the surface of Bangladesh are a combination of tectonic motions, anthropogenic signals and the elastic response of the lithosphere to seasonal loading from flooding. The GPS surface deflection caused by seasonal flooding shows a strong annual cycle. Seasonal irrigation pumping in the dry season further augments the natural seasonal cycle. The overall deflection is composed of the effects of multiple individual events due to local rainfall, snowmelt, rainfall further upstream in the drainage basin, and storm surges providing a rich signal for modeling. We model the load causing the deflection by making daily estimates of water storage throughout Bangladesh and calculating the response of an elastic half space to changes in this water load over the 5 year period considered here. The tectonic signal is assumed to be steady, which we estimate by fitting a linear trend to the residuals after removing the effect of the water load. Part of this long term signal is due to long term groundwater withdrawal, particularly at Dhaka [Shamsudduha et al., 2009]. 4.1. Calculating the Water Load [21] We determined the water level for each day throughout Bangladesh from January 2003 through December 2007 by fitting a gridded surface with a spatial resolution of 3 to the river gage data for that day. The choice of grid size represents a balance between resolving the details of the flooding and computation time. The resolution of 3 was selected as the minimum needed to resolve the river channel belts without smearing and corresponds roughly to the spacing of gages spanning the rivers. In order to calculate differences in the water level surface over time, we chose a reference water level to be that of 24 February 2004, a day that had one of the lowest water levels in the time series.

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Figure 7. Map showing the 304 water level stations used to calculate load of water that is sequestered in Bangladesh. Plots of individual stations illustrate the varied patterns of water level fluctuations seen throughout the country, ranging from flashy near high topography to smoothly varying on major rivers to tidal. All plots have the same scale and show 12 m in the vertical and up to 5 years in the horizontal. The red lines indicate the danger level when the rivers overtop their levees. Green dots indicate tidal stations, Black dots indicate non tidal stations. The red box shows the location of the image in Figure 2. As water levels fluctuate, the water is partitioned between groundwater filling pore space and surface water filling the river valleys and flooding fields (Figure 8). The distribution of surface flooding versus groundwater changes was estimated by comparing the water level surface with topography from the SRTM Digital Elevation Model. Water surface heights between the reference low water level and the surface were considered groundwater. Where the water level surface was higher than topography it was considered floodwater and we used the elevation difference as the inundation depth [e.g., Wilson et al., 2007]. [22] As water levels rise, most of the water outside of river valleys initially fills available pore space in the soil. Data on the specific yield for Bangladesh are sparse. Recent papers

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Figure 8. Cartoon showing how water loads are calculated. Water loads are measured relative to water levels at an arbitrary date during low water levels in winter. As water levels rise, most of the water outside of river valleys fills available porosity in the soil. The water load for groundwater is calculated as 20% of the difference between the water level and reference level. As water rises and floods the surface, the load is calculated by taking 20% of the volume filled with groundwater plus 100% of the surface floodwaters. Initially, floodwaters fill the low lying fields used for rice cultivation. The danger level is reached when the river overtops its levees flooding the town and roads that are located on the high ground.

have measured or modeled values of specific yield or porosity as 1829% [Nobi and Das Gupta, 1997; Cuthbert et al., 2002; Rahman and Shahid, 2004]. Other papers have assumed values of 1525% [Polizzotto et al., 2005; Hoque et al., 2007]. We assume a specific yield of 20% for the sandy silty soils of Bangladesh. Therefore the water load for groundwater was calculated as 20% of the difference between the water level and reference level. As water levels rise, water floods the surface and the load is then calculated by taking 20% of the volume filled with groundwater plus 100% of the surface floodwaters. [23] An example of this calculation is given in Figure 9. Figure 9a shows the low water reference surface. Figure 9b shows the water level for 23 July 2004, the same day as the analysis in Figure 3. The difference between the two levels is presented in Figure 9c. Figure 9d shows the calculated extent of flooding estimated from the intersection of the water surface and the topography. Good agreement with the open water extent calculated from satellite imagery can be seen by comparing the calculation to Figure 3. We use this calculation to partition the water between surface and groundwater enabling us to calculate the distribution of water mass in Bangladesh (Figure 9e). Relative to the simple difference in water levels (Figure 9c), the water mass distribution is biased toward the open water near the major rivers. The complete set of calculated extent of flooding and computed water loads are provided as Animation S1 in the auxiliary material.1 [24] The results of our water load calculations for each day can also be compared to the equivalent water thickness from the GRACE monthly gravity anomalies (Figure 6). The average water thicknesses were converted to total water load by multiplying by the area of each of the masks. Errors are 8.8 and 4.3 GT for masks A and B, respectively. The comparison of the water mass estimates from the smaller mask corresponding to Bangladesh (mask B) and the river gage data in Bangladesh show good agreement considering
1 Auxiliary materials are available in the HTML. doi:10.1029/ 2009JB007018.

the uncertainties in each (Figure 10). A comparison of monthly means for the river gage data to the GRACE set yields a correlation coefficient of r2 = 0.81 with a slope of 0.95 0.06. Both sets of data indicate that in an average year just over 100 GT of water is stored within Bangladesh. The storage can reach 150 GT during exceptional floods (2004 and 2007). The larger estimate of water mass from mask A, which incorporates water storage in West Bengal, Assam and part of Bihar (Figure 1), is approximately double the amount stored in Bangladesh, although the area is 2.7 times larger, reflecting the greater extent of flooding in Bangladesh. [25] The water impounded in Bangladesh during the monsoon represents a significant fraction of the total river discharge. The 100 GT represents about 7.5% of the total Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna discharge. In an extreme year, the flooding increases proportionally more than the discharge and water storage may exceed 10% of the total discharge. Essentially, the storage and later release of groundwater extends the period of high discharge through the lower delta plain and lessens the peak discharge to the ocean. The upper delta, primarily a belt extending from a 23.5N to a little north of 25N, absorbs the bulk of the stored water (Figure 9e) and acts as a buffer for the discharge. The estimated stored water has a peak in late July, but remains at very high levels until mid October, when it begins its decline. 4.2. Elastic Half Space Model [26] Processing the water monitoring data for each day, we produce a series of water level maps showing how flooding and total water storage occurs over time. To calculate the deflection of the surface caused by each water load, we used the code of Becker and Bevis [2004]. This routine computes the response of a uniform elastic half space to a rectangular load, which is ideal for use with gridded small load distributions such as in this study. We compute the deflection due to each rectangular load at each observation point, and then sum all of the contributions to get the total deflection at each observation point. For a

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Figure 9. Maps illustrating the calculation of the deformation due to the water load. Dots in Figures 9a 9d are the locations of water level measurement stations. (a) Map of low water level used as a reference for calculating water load. (b) Map of water level surface from an example day during summer monsoon. (c) Map of elevation difference in water surface between example day and reference day. (d) Map illustrating how we estimate flooding by differencing topography and water surface. Water higher than topography constitutes flooding. Compare to open water extent in Figure 3. (e) Water load calculated as flood waters plus groundwater, assuming water fills 20% of volume in subsurface. (f) Deflection of surface caused by load in Figure 9e calculated using code of Becker and Bevis [2004] for a Youngs modulus of 100 GPa. Dots are GPS stations installed in 2003 (black) and 2007 (red). uniform half space, the only unknown parameters are Youngs modulus, E, and Poissons ratio. Poissons ratio, to which the deflection is only mildly sensitive [Bevis et al., 2005], is set to 0.25. The remaining variable, Youngs modulus was varied to find the value that best fit the vertical motions at the GPS stations DHAK and SUST. Figure 11 shows the differences between the calculated and observed vertical motions at the two GPS stations for selected values of E. In each case, we remove the calculated deflection and then perform a weighted least squares fit of a straight line to the data using the daily uncertainties estimated by the GPS processing. We used a 1/s2 weighting to match the method GAMIT/GLOBK uses for estimating rates in GPS data. Data from NovemberDecember 2007 was excluded from the computations because of artifacts from decreased number of available gaging stations. For ease of comparison of the GPS to the computed deflection, we also show the GPS data smoothed with a 10 day Gaussian filter to reduce the daily scatter. The best fitting value of Youngs modulus is 123 GPa for DHAK and 137 GPa for SUST (Figure 12), with the best fitting values in the range of 110140 GPa. However, the upper bound is not well constrained, particularly for SUST.

5. Results and Discussion

[27] The plot of weighted RMS residuals versus Youngs modulus (Figure 12a) shows a strong asymmetry for the

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Figure 10. Comparison of the water load estimated using the river monitoring stations and the GRACE monthly anomalies filters using the masks in Figure 6. One sigma error bars are shown for the GRACE anomalies. River data and mask B, corresponding to the same area as covered by the Bangladesh river gages, are in agreement within statistical uncertainty. misfit with a poorly defined upper limit for E. This asymmetry is due to the fact that the amplitude of the deflection for a vertical load has the form of
w P1  =E 1  f x; y; z zgx; y; z 1

yielding
wz0 P 1  2 =E f x; y; 0 2

where w is the vertical displacement and wz = 0 is the vertical deflection at the surface, P is the load, n is Poissons ratio, E is Youngs modulus, and f (x, y, z) and g(x, y, z) are geometric functions describing the deflection as a function of position relative to the load. At large distances from the loads, the deflections fall off as 1/r, the distance from the load. The full formula for a rectangular region is given by Becker and Bevis [2004] and for a circular region is given by Johnson [1985]. For all cases the deflection is inversely proportional to E. The deflection is only weakly dependent on n, as noted by Bevis et al. [2005]. Values of 0.27 or even 0.30 would only result in a 1 to 3% decrease in E. [28] Since the deflection is inversely proportional to Youngs modulus, we calculated the wrms residual versus 1/E and found it yields a symmetric curve with a well defined minimum. To test the significance of the model, we calculated the reduced c2 parameter (c2 normalized by dividing by the degrees of freedom). This calculation is shown in Figure 12b. Both stations show a significant improvement above the 99% confidence level. At the best fitting values, there is a 5153% reduction in the variance. For a uniform elastic half space, the lower limit of acceptable values for Youngs modulus, E, is well defined. Combining the two stations, the improvement for values of E below 85 GPa is not significant at the 95% level. For the upper limit, all realistic values of E yield statistically significant improvements. Essentially, the residuals after removing the calculated water load deflections are 7.88.9 mm and are less than the mean of the daily GPS uncertainties of 10.6 and 11.2 mm at DHAK and SUST, respectively. This is the limitation for model resolution. However, the improved quality of the fits at the best fitting values suggests the daily GPS uncertainties may be overestimated. [29] The residuals after removing the water load calculations reflects the normal scatter of GPS measurements and

the imperfect estimation of the water load using only surface water levels. Overall, the large scale seasonal cyclicity is accounted for and the remaining residuals show some higher frequency peaks and a small summer winter cycle. While there are a number of possible sources for this pattern (e.g., TZD errors, water load errors, reference frame issues), they are not statistically significant. [30] Removing the estimated water load yields a slight adjustment to the slope of the best fit line, which represents the long term subsidence, for each value of E. For DHAK, the subsidence rate decreases from 12.25 to 10.80 mm/yr. For SUST, the rate increases slightly from 12.62 to 12.81 mm/yr. While the rates are still large, we interpret them differently. At Dhaka, rapid groundwater withdrawal is lowering the water table by 2.5 m/yr [Hoque et al., 2007], while at Sylhet, the rate is less than 1/10 of that. Thus much of the subsidence at DHAK may be due to local compaction from water withdrawal and the tectonic rate is probably at the lower end of the 29 mm/yr seen in our other nearby GPS sites (S. H. Akhter et al., manuscript in preparation, 2010). At SUST, water withdrawal is likely a minor component. On geologic timescales, the Sylhet Basin is the most rapidly subsiding area in Bangladesh [Goodbred and Kuehl, 2000; Johnson and Alam, 1991]. [31] The loading in Bangladesh contrasts with the poroelastic effects seen in California [Amelung et al., 1999; Bawden et al., 2001] where filling of deep aquifers produces an upward deflection. The California case is, in effect, loading from below where the increased head in the aquifer lifts the overlying sediments. In Bangladesh the primary filling occurs in the open surface aquifer. Increased pore pressure in the shallow sediment between the low water level and the surface would produce almost negligible expansion. Our use of older buildings for monuments would also minimize observed uplift caused by this expansion. However, if any effect occurred, it would decrease our estimate for Youngs modulus. 5.1. Limitation of the Study [32] One limitation of this study is our reliance solely on river gage data in Bangladesh. Most of the recharge in Bangladesh is due to water brought into the country from the rivers; only 7% is from local rainfall. With most of the water brought by the rivers, the rivers rise first, causing very

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Figure 11. Calculated deflections for various values of Youngs modulus (E) compared to vertical motion at the GPS stations (a) DHAK and (b) SUST. Loading calculations were performed using code from Becker and Bevis [2004]. (left) Comparisons of the calculated deflections to the detrended GPS data and (right) the residual after subtracting the calculated deflection and then detrending. The misfit was calculated with a 1/s2 weighted RMS using the standard deviation of the daily GPS positions. The smoothed lines were calculated with a 10 day Gaussian filter to reduce daily scatter.
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Figure 11. (continued)

localized loading. Recharge of the groundwater away from the rivers requires time for the water to spread into the countryside away from the rivers. Our model does not account for this time lag. The interpolation of water levels between rivers assumes that flooding away from the rivers

occurs simultaneously with increases in river height. Thus while the highest water levels span JulyOctober, our calculated water load peaks in July, while the GRACE and GPS signals peak in September. The opposite effect occurs after flooding as well, since the river drain first, leaving the

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Figure 12. (a) Plots of the wrms misfit values versus Youngs modulus. DHAK is in blue and SUST is in red. The minimum values are marked by large dots. The solid lines are the calculations shown in Figure 11. The dashed lines are minimum wrms misfits when the deflection curve was allowed to lag to account for the delay in groundwater infiltration not represented in the river data. The horizontal lines are the wrms misfits for the GPS stations with no loading correction. The colored vertical bands indicate the ranges of E for sediments, crust and mantle rocks that are more fully described in Figure 13. (b) Plot of the reduced c2 parameter (c2 divided by degrees of freedom) for the same models fits plotted versus 1/E. 95% and 99% confidence values are 0.937 and 0.911, respectively. surrounding regions to drain more slowly into them. Thus total load does not change as quickly as river levels. This can be seen in the comparison of the water load to the GRACE estimates (Figure 7) where the signals show a slight phase shift with the water load rising and falling sooner. An additional effect is due to seasonal irrigation pumping for growing dry season boro rice. This lowers the water table in the fields with maximum pumping in Feb.March, coinciding with the river level minimum. In contrast, pumping is minimal during the rainy season. It is possible that higher frequency fluctuations seen in the residuals during the dry season could be due to lowered water levels from pumping not seen by the river gages. [33] The bias in the estimation of the water load solely from river gages produces several effects. First, the amount of stored water is likely overestimated during the start of the monsoon. This will shift our results toward higher values of Youngs modulus. Second, it produces a shift in the timing of the water load. This can be seen in Figure 11 where the predicted deflection curve often falls and rises earlier than the observed GPS deflection. For higher values of E, it is this difference during the rising and falling limbs that causes much of the longer wavelength misfit; the cyclicity in the misfit is shifted relative to the water loading. To examine this further, we cross correlated the calculated deflection and the GPS deflection to examine the lags. The best fitting lags were 11 days for DHAK and 5 days for SUST. The lags improved both fits, most noticeably at DHAK (Figure 12) and slightly decreased the E estimates. This, however, is an incomplete substitute for a more accurate estimate of the water mass and distribution. Incorporating groundwater data, in addition to the river gages, should ameliorate this effect. [34] On a finer scale, we also observe a slight time shift in the predicted versus the observed deformation for individual peaks. In these cases, the deformation predicted from the water heights always precedes the deflection observed in the GPS by a few days (Figure 11). The lag for the peaks is likely smaller because floodwater spreads more quickly than groundwater. Overall, the lag between the predicted and observed load using only river data can by used to estimate a large scale transmissivity of the groundwater system. [35] Another limitation of this study is that we did not incorporate loads from outside of Bangladesh into the calculations. Based on the larger water mass seen using the rectangular mask A and the distribution of flooding seen on Figure 1, we made crude estimates of the potential vertical deformation at our GPS sites for loads in Assam, Cachar, West Bengal and Bihar (Figure 1). We find that the water load in Assam has the largest effect on SUST and West Bengal load has the largest influence on DHAK. Using elastic half space models, we estimate that the suite of water loads could potentially cause 7 (DHAK) to 9 (SUST) mm of deflection at the sites. However, the flooding for all but Cachar occurs on the thick Indian craton with a thin sedimentary cover. The coupling from the rigid craton to the weaker Bengal Basin may reduce the size of the vertical motion produced in Bangladesh. Additionally, for loads beyond Bangladesh, the flat earth approximation used by Becker and Bevis [2004] may not be adequate and a spherical earth model may be necessary.

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overestimated. A 10% decrease in the specific yield would decrease the stored groundwater and lower the average load size by 7%. The Youngs modulus decrease will depend on the geometry of the load change, but should decrease roughly proportionately to the load (equation (2)). 5.2. Lithospheric Properties [37] In order to interpret our estimates of Youngs modulus in terms of physical properties of the lithosphere, we calculated values for the sediments, crust and mantle beneath Bangladesh (Figure 13). Due to the very limited available data from the region, we made use of global data compilation estimates for the center of the Bengal Basin and local seismological studies at the fringe of the basin. For the area of the greatest sediment load, we calculated Youngs modulus for sediments from the velocities, densities and thicknesses given by the Laske and Masters [1997] global digital map of sediment thickness (1 1). In addition, we also calculated values for the Sclater and Christie [1980] sediment compaction curves using the model of Lee [2003] for the elastic properties of sediments. We note that sediments in most of Bangladesh east of the hinge zone are highly overpressured [Zahid and Uddin, 2005] which arrests compaction. The overpressure generally starts at 35 km depth in Bangladesh (Figure 13, yellow dashed line). Furthermore, at high burial depths, sediments will undergo metamorphism making the low shale values unrealistic. Youngs modulus values for the crust and mantle are calculated from the Bassin et al. [2000] global 2 2 gridded data set, CRUST 2.0. [38] The only locally derived information comes from the S wave velocity profiles published by Mitra et al. [2005, 2008], which were derived from P to S conversions observed in teleseismic data at stations near the India Bangladesh border (Figure 4). We converted the S wave velocities to Youngs modulus using the equations derived by Brocher [2005] for P and S wave velocity density relationships. We plot results for the arrivals from the south for SHP on the Shillong Plateau below the overthrust basement block and for AGT in Tripura (Figure 4). We do not use the station KMG in Cachar as the only two arrivals used in the inversion were from the NE and the velocity depth profile is significantly different [Mitra et al., 2005]. Both profiles are consistent with thick overpressured sediments with a low Youngs modulus down to 1719 km. Below that depth there is a gradient likely reflecting the transition from metamorphosed sediments to crystalline crust. Our estimate of Youngs modulus lies between the values for the low strength sediments and the high strength mantle at greater depth, partly overlapping with crustal values. [39] The GPS sites overlie the thick sediments of the Bengal Basin; loading from the Shillong Plateau further depresses the Sylhet Basin, which may contain the thickest sediments. Thus, our GPS observation sites must overlie either thin continental or oceanic crust. The crystalline crust (not including metamorphosed sediments) is probably not more than 10 km thick. Mitra et al. [2008], in their analysis of AGT in Tripura, found a 6 km ocean like crust. Our single value for Youngs modulus, however, does not completely represent the response of a mixture of compliant sediments and stiffer mantle. Low sedimentary values of Youngs modulus cannot capture the broad response of the mantle, while high mantle values capture the broad response, but not the more localized deformation under the load.

Figure 13. Comparison of our estimated values for Youngs modulus to literature estimates. We note that our estimate lies approximately midway between values for the sediments and the mantle reflecting the influence of each on the average elastic properties of the lithosphere in Bangladesh. Sediments: the green line shows values calculated from the velocities, densities and thicknesses given by the Laske and Masters [1997] global digital map of sediment thickness (1 1) for the area of the greatest sediment load. In addition, we calculated values for the Sclater and Christie [1980] sediment compaction curves using the model of Lee [2003]. We note that sediments in many parts of Bangladesh are overpressured (OP), which arrests compaction as indicated by dashed yellow line. Furthermore, with high burial depths, sediments will undergo metamorphism making the low shale values unrealistic. Crust and mantle properties are taken from the Bassin et al. [2000] global 2 2 gridded data set, CRUST 2.0. Amazon value is from Bevis et al. [2005]. Local values for the Bengal Basin are derived from receiver function S velocities of Mitra et al. [2005, 2008] at locations shown in Figure 4 using the formulas of Brocher [2005]. Our best fitting range is given by a purple band with blue and red stripes corresponding to the DHAK and SUST best fit values. [36] Our best fit estimate of Youngs modulus is slightly (133135 GPa for SUST) to moderately (117124 GPa for DHAK) lower than observations at the Amazon (137 GPa; [Bevis et al., 2005]). If our estimate for the specific yield of 20% averaged over Bangladesh is too high then E is

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[40] Deformation for a surface load on an elastic half space varies roughly inversely with depth scaled by the width of the load. Examination of the calculated deformation from both simple rectangular loads and the observed water load show that it extends to depths >200 km. This is not surprising considering the extent of the load, which is much broader than the sediment thickness. We conclude that the deflection from the water load extends well into the mantle and is not absorbed solely in the weak sediments. The water loading is thus sensitive to both the upper mantle and the weaker sedimentary/crustal structure, yielding and average value that lies between values for the sediments and the mantle, partly overlapping with crustal values. [41] The results presented here represent the first estimates of the elastic strength of the lithosphere in the center of the Bengal Basin. However, this study still has many limitations providing caveats on the results. The next stages of this study will make use of the GRACE satellite data to better represent the water loads beyond Bangladesh. We will also incorporate groundwater wells from the BWDBs extensive collection in addition to the river gages to better represent the water load, model the seasonal cycle utilizing a depth dependent Youngs modulus, and extend the time series of the hydrologic and geodetic data so that more GPS stations can be used to constrain the modeling.

well defined, the upper limit is weakly defined due to the 1/E dependence of the deflection. The average value of Youngs modulus reflects the influence of both high mantle values (190 GPa) and very low values for the thick and overpressured sediments (mostly 3075 GPa). [44] Acknowledgments. We would like to thank the host of people who helped through discussions, advice, and physical assistance. We would like to thank Jim Davis and two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to improve this paper. This analysis and GPS deployments were supported by NASA grant NNX08AF13G and U.S. National Science Foundation grants EAR 06 36037 and INT 9900487. This paper is also based on equipment and engineering services provided by the UNAVCO Facility with support from the National Science Foundation and NASA under NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR 0735156. Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory publication 7370.

References
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6. Conclusions
[42] The high discharge of the major rivers in Bangladesh during the summer monsoon exceeds the carrying capacity of the rivers and causes widespread surface flooding and recharge of groundwater aquifers. The total stored water within Bangladesh averages 100 GT and can reach 150 GT during extreme events. This constitutes 7.5% of the total river discharge and can reach 10% during extreme events. This storage delays the discharge into the ocean relative to the discharge into Bangladesh. The mass of this stored water is responsible for the second largest seasonal anomaly in the GRACE gravity field. Estimates of the amount of impounded water from monthly GRACE anomalies and daily river levels are in identical within statistical limits. [43] This water mass is a large load on the surface of the earth and causes an elastic deformation of the lithosphere at annual timescales. This deformation is recorded by continuous GPS stations within Bangladesh as a seasonal vertical deflection that can reach 56 cm. Daily estimates of the river levels were used to estimate the stored surface and groundwater. We use this database to calculate deformation of an elastic half space. Vertical GPS deflections due to seasonal hydrology have been frequently observed, however this study is only the second use of this data to estimate lithospheric elastic properties. We successfully fit the deflection observed in two GPS stations at Dhaka and Sylhet reducing the variance from linear subsidence by over 50%. However, the GPS data shows a slight lag relative to the estimated water load that is likely due to time required for water to diffuse away from the river. This is an artifact of solely using river gages and points to the need for addition constraints from groundwater data. The best fitting values of Youngs modulus (E) ranges from 117 to 135 GPa, slightly lower than estimates for the Amazon Basin [Bevis et al., 2005]. While, a minimum value of E is

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