Team Name: Bhutan Water Resources
Project Video Title: Bhutan Water Resources
>> Tenzin: In between two big countries of
China and India lies a very small country
with the size of 14,824 square miles named
Bhutan. Regardless of her size, Bhutan has
also been experiencing the effects of climate
variability, with increasing potential
melt and decreasing likelihood of precipitation.
Bhutan already faces the risk from glacial lake
outburst floods and this threat could increase
through a warming climate. This warming trend
also affects the local communities in Bhutan.
Partner speaking
Speaker- Changa Tshering:
Bhutanese communities have already witnessed
and are concerned about changes such as decrease
in duration and intensity of snowfall, increasing
incident of pest and diseases outbreak, drying
up of spring water resources, increasing incidence
of vector born diseases in the southern regions
and shrinkage of alpine pasture in the northern
regions. These changes have already caused
the bhutanese communities a lot, either economically,
socially, or environmentally.
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>> Tenzin: The Bhutan Water Resources team
partnered with the Bhutan Foundation, the
Himalayan Environmental Rhythms Observation
and Evaluation system program (HEROES) and
Ugyen Wangchuck Institute for Conservation
and Environmental Research (UWICER)for the
project. Google Earth Engine served as the
main platform to acquire precipitation and
temperature data using Earth observation platforms
and satellites like CHIRPS, FLDAS and MODIS
for the three focus districts, namely Thimphu,
Chhukha, and Gasa. Using satellite and ground
station data, a comparative analysis was performed
for each focus district to note if there were
any significant differences between the two
datasets.
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>> Tenzin: Based on the results acquired from
analyzing the datasets, the trend analysis
was pretty consistent for both modeled and
ground station data. However, there were slight
variations in trends for both temperature
and precipitation for each district. The modeled
data did not account for heights which explains
the variation in trends. Satellite precipitation
data are challenged in the Himalayas and it's
hard to measure rainfall above mountains and
dense forests.  Regardless, this suggests
that other researchers can use the satellite
data to make up for any missing ground
data
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