Application of remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) for reservoir water balance analysis

Abstract

Remote Sensing (RS) data and Geographical Information System (GIS) play a rapidly increasing role in the field of hydrology and water resource development. The ability of RS to generate information in spatial and temporal domain can be consider as one of its greatest advantages in providing data for hydrological modeling and monitoring. This is very important since the availability of such information is very crucial for successful model analysis, prediction and validation. The use of RS technology will involves large amount of spatial management and thus requires an efficient system to handle such data. The GIS technology provides suitable alternatives for efficient management of large and complex databases. This study attempts to quantify the water balance components of the Bekok Reservoir in the state of Johor, Malaysia. This will enable us to determine the major factors that contribute to the input and output of water into the reservoir. An assessment will also be made to find out the hydrological responses due to land use and land cover change. Meteorological data such as rainfall and evapotranspiration are the main input data for the calculation of water balance. Spatial rainfall data will be obtained from Tropical Rain Measuring Mission (TRMM 2A25), while evaporatranspiration will be derived from ASTER satellite data using HBV-96 run-off model.