Stream flow monitoring and forecasting;Supporting water resources management through use of EO data
Abstract
The water sector in Africa is very sensitive to prolonged climate variability. This variability is expected to alter the hydrological cycle, temperature balance, and rainfall patterns across Africa and thus has the potential to add to existing pressure on water availability, accessibility, and demand. Other factors, like increasing populations and water use indicate that more countries in Africa will exceed the limits of their economically usable, land-based water resources before 2025. Eastern and Southern African regions face issues related to flood and drought events. Natural and anthropogenic phenomena contribute to these issues, which are further exacerbated by poor policies for developing water resources. According to the Africa Water Vision 2025 report by UNECA, a key limitation at national, sub regional and continental level to water resources development is the paucity of data on water resources. Inadequate human capacity in the collection, assessment and dissemination of data on water resources for developing, planning, and implementing projects, and inadequate institutional and financial arrangements have contributed to these limitations. For instance, institutions in Tanzania lack the required skills to use geospatial tools and products to estimate water quantities at resolutions useful for decision making.
The need to build capacity of institutions to better plan and manage available water resources led SERVIR Eastern and Southern Africa to develop a water resource management service, and consequently build the capacity of the stakeholders in using such products. The service employs multiple hydrological models, multiple satellite derived precipitation products, and other climatic data to simulate stream-flow products at different temporal scales. Sample products include stream flow forecast time series, bias corrected satellite precipitation, and a visualization platform with data download capability. The products will inform on the availability of water at different time scales, at specific river gauging stations, helping institutions mandated with water resources management predict and monitor extreme events (i.e, low-flows, and floods).- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGC43A..11W
- Keywords:
-
- 1616 Climate variability;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1655 Water cycles;
- GLOBAL CHANGE