Modelling the total water balance in Indonesia

Short project description

UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE.

Indonesia faces various severe problems with ‘environmental water’: flooding in the wet season and shortage in the dry season. Effects of climate change are predicted to make the situation worse. To understand the total water balance, the relations between the various components should become clear. Precipitation is the only source of water on the land. This rain water cycles back to the ocean or atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration (ET), overland run-off, river discharges, and changes in ground water storage. An accurate quantification of all components seems impossible to obtain because of lack of data and detailed understanding. Mathematical modelling can help to get qualitative information of specific aspects in several situations; the work on peatland in this project is an example. However, in all cases data are essential to calibrate or validate the models. But in Indonesia reliable data are scarce, and if available, usually do not cover a full or long enough period of observation. This fact was a strong motivation to organise, as part of this project on total water balance, the short course on satellite observation. The available information that will come freely available (at no cost, in near-real time) from FengYunCast (CMA) may make a large difference in the near future. But, all these ‘data’ are a translation of signals received by the satellite, and it requires substantial modelling to retrieve from the signals the desired environmental quantities such as rain and evapotranspiration. Part of this modelling has been critically examined in the successive Training & Research Workshop.

Persons involved

dr. Andonowati (LabMath-Indonesia)

dr. ir. Martijn J. Booij

prof. dr. Hidayat Pawitan (Institut Pertanian Bogor)

dr. SK Saptomo (Institut Pertanian Bogor)

dr. Dodo Gunawan (BMKG Jakarta)

prof. dr. E. van Groesen (University of Twente)

Publications 

Bulsink, F., Hoekstra, A.Y. and Booij, M.J., 2009, The water footprint of Indonesian provinces related to the consumption of crop products. Value of Water Research Report Series No. 37, UNESCO-IHE, Delft, The Netherlands.

Bulsink, F., Hoekstra, A.Y. and Booij, M.J., 2010. The water footprint of Indonesian provinces related to the consumption of crop products. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 14, 119–128.