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>> Narrator: Over the last century, intense
development has taken place along Thailand's
Chao Phraya River.
With available water meeting just over half
of the demonstrated demand during the dry
season, access to water and its quality have
become increasingly important to downstream
stakeholders, like the city of Bangkok.
Through this project, we aimed to model changes
in water quality so that regional planners
and decision makers might have the information
they need to work towards improving water
quality.
In order to do this, we worked in partnership
with several organizations, including the
Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, the Asian
Institute of Technology, the Royal Thai Embassy
Office of Science and Technology, the Asian
Disaster Preparedness Center, and the NASA
SERVIR Science Coordination Office.
These partners expressed an interest in incorporating
NASA Earth Observations into watershed remediation
planning for the Chao Phraya.
When study areas are extremely large and encompass
a lot of land, ground data can be sparse,
but NASA Earth Observations can fill in the
gaps.
Using precipitation data from TRMM TMPA and
elevation data from SRTM, our team provided
our partners with a basin-wide assessment
of the watershed that would otherwise be
difficult to produce.
We used these datasets as inputs for the soil
water assessment tool, which combines multiple
layers...
[Plop Sound Effects]
to simulate water quality.
[ click ]
This model allowed us to meet four objectives:
one: Locate areas contributing to high sediment
concentration
two: Understand historical changes in water
quality
three: Analyze the relationship between urbanization
and water quality
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four: Understand seasonal variation in water
quality
Using these results, our project partners
will be able to identify priority areas for
watershed restoration efforts.
>> Eric: One of the exciting things about
this project to me is the exploration of how
satellite precipitation and satellite derived
land cover maps can help us answer questions
about what's happening in the larger Chao
Phraya watershed and how that may affect the
Bangkok metropolitan area
>> Narrator: Incorporating NASA Earth Observations
into the decision making process of our stakeholders
will help them to protect the health and livelihoods
of those they serve.
