Impact of 2016 intense drought to small tropical reservoir: An early onset and late recovery experience in Timah Tasoh, Malaysia

Abstract

This study investigates the hydrological drought impact during the extreme 2016 El-Nino to small tropical reservoir of Timah Tasoh, in Perlis, Malaysia. Small tropical reservoirs are important freshwater supplier due to its economic & strategic factors including (i) closer distance to inhabitants and agriculture footprints, (ii) easy access to the resource, and (iii) cheaper cost of water pipelines system. In theory, small tropical lakes or reservoirs are facing higher risk to drought compared to the bigger ones. However, detail information and evidence are required for site specific drought adaptation in the future especially the onset and offset of the drought at specific hydrometeorological and dam scale. Prior to that, a case study was conducted in one of the small-sized and shallow reservoirs of Timah Tasoh, Perlis to analyze the impact. The larger Pedu reservoir was selected as control site. Both reservoirs were having identical hydro-climatic characteristics (seasonality of rainfall). The observation on the rainfall and reservoir level data indicated that the small sized reservoir (Timah Tasoh) tends to dry about 2 months faster (reached dam critical level) and recover 1 month late compared to the normal dry season. In comparison with the Pedu reservoir, the drought onset and offset in Timah Tasoh was earlier and late respectively although the rainfall pattern is typical. The total impacted drying days for Timah Tasoh is 197 days compared to 78 days of Pedu (about 3 months longer). The findings indicate that the 2016 extreme drought impacted the Timah Tasoh small reservoir where they would suffer longer dry season and experienced slower recovery compared to the bigger Pedu reservoir. The outcome of this investigation signifies that the early drought onset monitoring should be implemented for the small sized reservoirs to take appropriate mitigation and preventive measures in adapting to the intense drought.