A new Tool for Monitoring the Irrigated Cropland Use and Water Use Efficiency in the Amudarya River Basin

Kurzfassung

Water scarcity in the semi-arid to arid Amudarya River Basin in the Aral Sea Basin together with the effects of population growth and climate change is supposed to imply future conflicts in all water-use sectors and to foster food insecurity in the long-term, particularly against the background of persistent dependency from agricultural production. An efficient irrigation agriculture and innovative technologies supporting the informed decision-making are expected to distinctly contribute to sustainable regional development, thus to support a crucial adaption option to climate change and future food security. The online information tool WUEMoCA presents a continuous monitoring platform for providing a list of agriculturally relevant predefined key indicators on the state of land use and crop type distribution as well as water use efficiency. Implemented indicators are largely derived from open-source, optical satellite remote sensing MODIS imagery and climate data, but also incorporate data as provided by further regional databases. Derived spatio-temporal geoinformation is spatially aggregated mainly towards the administrative level of province and districts as well as regular raster cells. Moreover, WUEMoCA enables for the interactive ‘user-tool-communication’ by providing the function to upload, respectively to draw polygons as user-specific defined areas of interest that differ from available administrative boundaries. Pre-defined indicators will then be calculated on-the-fly and made available to the user. Linked to this function, specific data such as water intake can be filled in by the user in order to get spatio-temporal information such as irrigation efficiency for areas of interest in the Amudarya River Basin. Potential applications of WUEMoCA in the Amudarya River Basin could spot at the identification and allocation of marginal lands with low productivity and of areas with highest land use intensity and/or water use efficiency. Groups of end-users comprise decision makers and advisors from water management institutions and from national governments but also regional and transboundary authorities and specialists dealing with aspects of sustainable land and water resources management in context of regional planning