The data acquired by Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite provides a new way for monitoring groundwater storage changes in China. It is vital to understand its applications in China. This paper systematically reviewed the research progress of groundwater storage monitoring in China based on GRACE data. First, we used the bibliometric analysis and quantitative analysis to clarify trends and characteristics of related studies. Then, we elaborated on the basic principles, methods and uncertainties of groundwater monitoring based on GRACE data. Furthermore, we reviewed the research progress from the aspects of spatial range, accuracies and findings. It was found that the groundwater storage monitoring in China based on GRACE data has gradually received more attention, and the numbers of relevant publications and total citations in both Chinese and English showed an increasing trend. The methods mainly include the principle of water balance and calibration of hydrological models using GRACE satellite data. Most of the relevant studies focused on the North China Plain. The monitoring results are in good agreement with the measured groundwater data, and their correlation coefficients are higher than 0.6. We suggested that the challenges such as low spatial resolution of GRACE data and the uncertainties in monitoring should be considered. In the future, global positioning system, interferometric synthetic aperture radar and groundwater level observation data can be integrated to improve the reliability of groundwater storage monitoring in China.

Keywords： GRACE ; Earth gravity satellites ; Groundwater storage changes ; Regional sustainability