Water scarcity, deteriorating water quality and inefficient water use are amongst the biggest environmental challenges in Central Asia. Global warming may deteriorate and aggravate the situation especially in the presence of transboundary conflicts among the member states. The only way forward is to address these issues through a joint effort by all Central Asian states. In the context of the German Water Initiative for Central Asia (2008–2019), the predecessor of Green Central Asia, a team of researchers at various institutes in Germany and Central Asia have developed an online tool “WUEMoCA” that addresses the issues of water productivity in Central Asian countries. WUEMoCA is an acronym for the Water Use Efficiency Monitor in Central Asia. The online tool is based on remote sensing analysis for the regional assessments of the irrigation water use efficiency in the Aral Sea Basin.
The potential applications of this tool include the identification of areas with need for action, such as marginal lands with low productivity, inefficient water use or exposure to droughts. Various management decisions can be derived from indicators for economic performance and sustainability, grouped into land use, productivity and water use efficiency. These indicators are derived by integrating satellite data (MODIS, calibrated with in-situ data), climate data and area-wide available statistics for the period from 2001 onwards.
The WUEMoCA data processing chain includes continuous download and processing (land use classification, evapotranspiration and crop yield estimation). Users can define the content of the output (maps, diagrams and tables) by the selection of area, time, indicators, and crop types for their specific applications. WUEMoCA analysis results are spatially aggregated to all irrigated provinces and districts of the Aral Sea Basin. For selected regions aggregations are shown also for Water User Associations, supply zones of (Basin) Irrigation System Authorities, and channel command areas.
In its current version, WUEMoCA is a demonstration platform with data from 2001- 2018. It includes the full range of environmental and socio-ecological indicators. From the period after the CAWa project, the tool WUEMoCA will be updated to provide basic remote sensing indicators continuously. In this context, to highlight the various functionalities of WUEMoCA tool, the development team has now launched a new YouTube channel “CAWA Green”. This channel presents practice videos of various outputs related to different indicators. Initially the videos are uploaded in English version only. However, these videos will also be uploaded in the Russian language. More videos concerning various functionalities of WUEMoCA tool and activities will be uploaded in future.
Link of the channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCspnRJE3Ml_9yvexWjipt-Q/featured
