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| Titel |
Monitoring the waters of the Nile Basin from space |
| VerfasserIn |
Kevin Fleming, Joseph Awange, Addisu Hunehnaw, Oliver Baur, Bernhard Heck, Ehsan Forootan |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2011
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 13 (2011) |
| Datensatznummer |
250050281
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The Nile Basin is an essential natural resource that supports over 200 million people over
East and Central Africa. However, the basin’s environment is under intense pressure from
both human exploitation and climate change, leading to a decline in available water,
threatening livelihoods and the ecosystem as a whole. This study uses products from the
GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment), ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and
land Elevation Satellite) and TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) earth
observing satellite (EOS) missions to monitor variations in the water storage of
the Nile Basin at high temporal resolutions (1 to 30 days), as well as Independent
Component Analysis (ICA) to separate out the different temporal and spatial modes of
variability. Results from such analyses potentially allows suitable management
plans to be developed for the basin’s sustainable use. We identify a general loss of
water from the basin over the last decade, in particular, from the Lake Victoria
basin and the Sudd wetland regions. Specifically, applying ICA to the GRACE
products reveals that significant amounts of water was lost in the area between Lake
Victoria, Lake Kyoga, Lake Albert and Mongolla between 2002 to 2006, probably due
the expanded Nalubale (Owen Falls) dam and the 1999-2004 Sudd blockage of
Lake Kyoga following the 1997 ENSO rains. This trend was, however, reversed
following the 2007 ENSO rainfall. In addition, a gain in water storage is found in the
Ethiopian highlands and the Bahr-El-Gazal river basin, emphasising the need to
examine the basin as a whole, which can only be done using space techniques. |
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