Joint project
CAWa, 2. Projektphase - Regionales Forschungsnetzwerk „Wasser in Zentralasien“
Period: 2011-2011
Detailed description:
In Central Asia, water is scarce and valuable, but unevenly distributed among the various countries in the region. The aim of the "Water in Central Asia" project (www.cawa-project.net) is to create a scientific and technical (geo)data basis for sustainable water management at a transnational level. Both water availability and water consumption are being investigated for various climate change scenarios. The project is being funded by the Federal Foreign Office until the end of 2017 as part of the "Berlin Process".
The project is coordinated by the German Research Center for Geosciences Potsdam (GFZ). Other partners include the Aerospace Center Oberpfaffenhofen (DLR), the Central Asian Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Coordination Water Commission (SIC ICWC) in Uzbekistan, the Regional Environmental Center for Central Asia (CAREC) in Kazakhstan, the Uzbek Khorezm Rural Advisory Support Service (KRASS) and the Central Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences (ZAIAG) in Kyrgyzstan.
Since 2009, the Chair of Remote Sensing has been deriving parameters for hydrological modeling from remote sensing data and developing a monitoring system for irrigated agriculture as part of the "Remote Sensing Products and Data Integration" work package. The spatial focus of the work lies on the one hand in the upper reaches of the Aral catchment area and in the lower reaches in the irrigation areas of the Amu Darya Delta and the Fergana Valley (Uzbekistan).
In the irrigation areas, the proportion of land used for agriculture and the proportion of the most important crops for the period from 2001 onwards is determined on the basis of the annually derived land use and land cover maps. High-resolution data such as Landsat (30m resolution) and the new RapidEye sensor (6m) as well as MODIS data (250m) for large-scale mapping are used as the data basis.
The interactive web map application "Water Use Efficiency Monitor for Central Asia" (WUEMoCA) is the focus of the CAWa work package "Online Tool for Monitoring of Land Use and Water Efficiency" during the 3rd phase of the CAWa project (duration 2015 to 2017).
This online tool is designed for the regional assessment of water use efficiency in the extensive irrigation systems of the transboundary Aral Sea basin. The first objective is to show the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of crop yields of the main crops, i.e. cotton, rice and wheat, based on freely available satellite imagery (MODIS 250m) and meteorological data. These results are summarized at different administrative levels (rayons = districts, oblasts = provinces). The monitoring application will also be used as an early warning tool for localizing agricultural droughts and forecasting crop failures.
In addition to the monitoring function, the online tool "WUEMoCA" will allow user interaction. For example, administrative and planning staff in Central Asia will be able to add hydrological data such as irrigation volumes to the system. This data can then be used to calculate water use efficiency, i.e. how much water is used to produce each crop (t/ha). It should also be possible to calculate this efficiency for any user-defined area.
In Central Asia, water is scarce and valuable, but unevenly distributed among the various countries in the region. The aim of the "Water in Central Asia" project (www.cawa-project.net) is to create a scientific and technical (geo)data basis for sustainable water management at a transnational level. Both water availability and water consumption are being investigated for various climate change scenarios. The project is being funded by the Federal Foreign Office until the end of 2017 as part of the "Berlin Process".
The project is coordinated by the German Research Center for Geosciences Potsdam (GFZ). Other partners include the Aerospace Center Oberpfaffenhofen (DLR), the Central Asian Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Coordination Water Commission (SIC ICWC) in Uzbekistan, the Regional Environmental Center for Central Asia (CAREC) in Kazakhstan, the Uzbek Khorezm Rural Advisory Support Service (KRASS) and the Central Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences (ZAIAG) in Kyrgyzstan.
Since 2009, the Chair of Remote Sensing has been deriving parameters for hydrological modeling from remote sensing data and developing a monitoring system for irrigated agriculture as part of the "Remote Sensing Products and Data Integration" work package. The spatial focus of the work lies on the one hand in the upper reaches of the Aral catchment area and in the lower reaches in the irrigation areas of the Amu Darya Delta and the Fergana Valley (Uzbekistan).
In the irrigation areas, the proportion of land used for agriculture and the proportion of the most important crops for the period from 2001 onwards is determined on the basis of the annually derived land use and land cover maps. High-resolution data such as Landsat (30m resolution) and the new RapidEye sensor (6m) as well as MODIS data (250m) for large-scale mapping are used as the data basis.
The interactive web map application "Water Use Efficiency Monitor for Central Asia" (WUEMoCA) is the focus of the CAWa work package "Online Tool for Monitoring of Land Use and Water Efficiency" during the 3rd phase of the CAWa project (duration 2015 to 2017).
This online tool is designed for the regional assessment of water use efficiency in the extensive irrigation systems of the transboundary Aral Sea basin. The first objective is to show the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of crop yields of the main crops, i.e. cotton, rice and wheat, based on freely available satellite imagery (MODIS 250m) and meteorological data. These results are summarized at different administrative levels (rayons = districts, oblasts = provinces). The monitoring application will also be used as an early warning tool for localizing agricultural droughts and forecasting crop failures.
In addition to the monitoring function, the online tool "WUEMoCA" will allow user interaction. For example, administrative and planning staff in Central Asia will be able to add hydrological data such as irrigation volumes to the system. This data can then be used to calculate water use efficiency, i.e. how much water is used to produce each crop (t/ha). It should also be possible to calculate this efficiency for any user-defined area.
