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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 19, 2000
SRI LANKA IS AMONG THE FIRST TO USE NEW SATELLITE TOOLS TO TRACK WATER RESOURCES
How much water is in the country’s ‘water bank account’? Sri Lanka’s experience using satellite remote sensing technology is an example for other Asian and African countries.
Sri Lanka’s Departments of Meteorology and Irrigation, with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), have been testing new satellite remote sensing tools that can help the country better understand and manage its water resources. This is one of the first uses of this kind of technology by a developing country. The lessons learned here provide examples that can help other countries implement remote sensing programs to support water allocation and food security strategies.
Using the tools applied in this study, agricultural specialists and government policy makers can interpret low-cost public domain satellite images to reveal data such as the amount of water use by crop, the rate of vegetation growth, or how much water is flowing out of a river basin into the sea. These tools show areas where agriculture can be expanded; where crops are getting enough water and where they’re not. They also help determine the water needs of natural wetlands and other indigenous ecosystems and calculate how much water is available for other uses, such as domestic and industrial needs.
The remote sensing techniques used for this project were developed through collaborative research by Wageningen Agricultural University, the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC) in the Netherlands, and IWMI.
This year, as part of a project sponsored by the Remote Sensing Board of the Netherlands, scientists from the Meteorology and Irrigation Departments worked with IWMI and ITC to learn the new techniques and tailor them to Sri Lanka’s needs. They presented the results of their work at a workshop held last week in Colombo. The objective of the workshop was to explore how this information can be used to improve water allocation and agricultural production on the island. The next stage will be to integrate these tools into planning and decision-making processes.
“The beauty of this system is that a country can reuse some of the information it gathers for weather tracking to improve the quality and precision of its water resources planning,” says Ian Makin, the scientist leading IWMI’s remote sensing research. The Sri Lankan Meteorological Office receives a daily satellite image of Sri Lanka. Currently, these satellite images are used to improve weather forecasting. As a part of this pilot test the weather satellite data is being interpreted using the remote sensing tools to examine the Sri Lankan water resources situation. A logical next step is regular dissemination of the analyzed data from the Meteorological Office to colleagues in the Irrigation Department, and other partners such as the Mahaweli Authority. These concepts are now being discussed by Sri Lankan authorities as a way to improve land and water resources information.
The Meteorology Department is currently processing daily satellite images and combining this data with rainfall data to produce weekly and monthly summaries, tracking water availability and use in agriculture. “This makes real time water management a possibility,” says H. M. Jayatillake, Deputy Director in charge of Irrigation Management, in the Sri Lankan Irrigation Department. “Using this information we can see our water use situation clearly, and take timely water management decisions, such as reallocating water resources within an irrigation system to prevent crops from suffering water stress, before yields are affected.”
Dharmasiri de Alwis, Team Leader of River Basin Management at the Mahaweli Authority, agrees: “Using satellite data in this way will enable the Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka to manage our river basins more effectively. We can more easily identify areas of the irrigation systems that that need to be rehabilitated or where management should be improved.”
Now that Sri Lanka has the capability to process remote sensing data, the next step is to convert this research dialogue into a working relationship between all actors. “For irrigation managers, this new information could become as valuable as weather forecasts as they work to improve the system’s performance,” says Makin.