Context
Climate change is altering the water cycle and droughts are, and will be, increasingly recurrent. The resulting significant water stresses must be anticipated and limited to avoid water use restrictions during the summer season. Despite the expertise of the territory, the data currently available are generally incomplete, heterogeneous, scattered or obsolete.
“Monitoring of hydrological processes requires repeated observation in both space and time to detect the sources and modes of transport of water and material flows in watersheds. Since the hydrological process is by nature highly heterogeneous, the more repeated the observation, the more reliable and informative it will be. Carbonneau and Piégay (2012) observe that the need to study and measure watersheds holistically naturally leads to remote sensing as a basic tool. Indeed, spatial data are the only data that allow continuous measurement at the watershed scale.” (Source : Theia website https://www.theia-land.fr/ ).
Imagery and space technologies, combined with in-situ data, have a high level of utility in providing large-scale, consistent, up-to-date, and comprehensive information.
The MEOSS WaterManagement suite of services is constantly evolving. It offers various and complementary tools to observe, assess and anticipate water-related risks and stresses.
WaterManagement: 3 services for an optimized coverage
MEO-Irrigation
MEO-WaterReserve
MEO-WaterColor
MEO-Irrigation
The tool for monitoring irrigated plots and their rotation
The exhaustive knowledge of withdrawals is a major challenge to plan an adapted water allocation. The immediate benefits to be gained are diverse and impact uses: adapting sowing, modulating authorized volumes or reinforcing the monitoring of the state of the site.
The agricultural sector is the first water user (70%), the exhaustive knowledge of the irrigated plots and of the withdrawals is thus a central subject for the water managers and the actors of the agricultural sector. With this in mind, MEOSS has developed its first WaterManagement service: MEO-Irrigation.
Mapping of irrigated plots between 2017 and 2020
ObjectiVEs
- Carry out an objective diagnosis of the practice of irrigation on large territories (watershed, department)
- To refine the estimates of water volumes withdrawn for irrigation (total irrigated surface, crop rotation, etc.)
- Observe trends in time and space
- Centralize irrigation data
- Facilitate decision making
PrincipLe
- Locates and distinguishes between irrigated and non-irrigated plots
- Characterizes the practice of irrigation (plot area, crop rotation, crop rotation and irrigation)
- Integrates and spatializes the declared data of water withdrawal by drilling for irrigation (BNPE)
- Offers a panel of micro indicators at the plot level and macro indicators at the watershed or administrative boundary level to facilitate analysis and decision making
- Web-based mapping application to view and compare indicators
Mapping the share of irrigated corn between 2017 and 2020
Who is it for?
Water Managers
- Actors in charge of operations
- Actors responsible for policy, planning and control
Agricultural players
- Agricultural cooperatives
- Irrigation equipment salesman / installer
MEO-WaterReserve
The tool for measuring and monitoring water bodies
The water bodies are subject to climatic and human constraints that give these hydrological units a certain dynamic. The poor management of water bodies through abusive withdrawals contributes to depleting the available potential. The effect of soil erosion downstream contributes to sedimentation and the reduction of their storage capacity. Extreme climatic phenomena are responsible for strong variations in water levels, causing floods and droughts.
To implement an integrated management of water bodies and a better planning of their use, the knowledge of these dynamics must be known at the scale of the catchment areas. Regular inventory and temporal monitoring of water bodies are key.
Monitoring of water bodies between 2017 and 2020
ObjectiVEs
- Inventory and characterize water bodies of all sizes over large territories (watershed, department)
- To refine the estimates of available water volumes
- To observe the dynamics in time and space (evolution of water bodies)
- Locate new water bodies, dry water bodies, saturated water bodies
- Set alert and critical threshold levels (water stress)
- Centralize water data
- Facilitate decision making
PrincipLe
- Mapping of water bodies and their characteristics (extent, position in relation to the hydrographic network, level of use)
- Quick visualization of the temporal dynamics of the water bodies thanks to graphs of the variation of the extent over several years
- Comparison of the maximum and/or minimum extent of water bodies with a reference year
- Mapping of water occurrence/persistence at the water body scale
- Measure and monitor water availability
- Provides a panel of micro indicators at the water body scale and macro indicators at the watershed or administrative boundary scale to facilitate analysis and decision making
- Web-based mapping application to view and compare indicators
Total volume withdrawn and declared between 2017 and 2020
Who is it for?
Water Managers
- Actors in charge of operations
- Actors responsible for policy, planning and control
Agricultural players
- Agricultural cooperatives
MEO-WaterColor
The water quality monitoring tool
Water that is more or less brown, green or blue tells us about its “quality” and/or nature. The use of space imagery allows us to objectively measure and quantify the color of natural waters from space, providing an unparalleled ability to monitor any point on the globe.
The measurement of water quality is based on the level of reflectance and absorption of light by the water. Three components present in water interfere with light: suspended matter, of mineral or organic origin; dissolved colored organic material, which represents part of the organic matter in solution; and finally, photosynthetic pigments present in phytoplankton, such as chlorophyll.
Dissolved solids mapping (09/02/2020)
ObjectiVEs
- Create virtual measurement stations to complement the in-situ measurement network
- Map the quality status and trends of the resource
- Visualize temporal dynamics
- Identify disturbances and monitor them in time and space (over time)
- Measure and monitor water quality: chlorophyll, turbidity, dissolved matter
PrincipLe
- Measurement and monitoring of turbidity and suspended particles
- Measurement and monitoring of the concentration of chlorophyll-a for the estimation of the eutrophication level
- Measurement and monitoring of the concentration of dissolved colored organic matter
- Web mapping application to visualize and compare indicators
Turbidity monitoring (09/02/2020)
Who is it for?
Water Managers
- Actors in charge of operations
- Actors responsible for policy, planning and control
Agricultural players
- Agricultural cooperatives
Thanks to new technologies, R&D and scientific partnerships, MEOSS will soon offer in its WaterManagement range:
- Drought indicators related to irrigation practices;
- Monitoring of water body volumes;
- In-season irrigation detection;
- The number of water turns for irrigation;
- To finally reach the quantification of the volumes of water withdrawn for irrigation.