Location Suitability for Small Reservoirs at the Bodri-Kuto River Basin Based on Spatial Monthly SPI

Abstract

Despite efforts to develop and conserve water resources, almost every year during the dry season, some areas in Central Java province in Indonesia still experience a lack of water, especially in rural villages. These areas require water supply via water trucks and/or portable pumps to obtain water from rivers and groundwater. The Central Java government committed to implementing a program involving the construction of 1000 small reservoirs by 2020 to overcome water shortages. However, the technically ideal sites are mostly privately owned, which requires lengthy and costly land acquisition. To avoid the uncertainty of land acquisition, some small reservoirs were placed on state-owned land, which did not require land acquisition. The consideration of putting more emphasis on state-owned land rather than technically ideal sites for the construction of small reservoirs raise the issue on the location suitability of those reservoirs. In this study, we evaluated the suitability of the location of small reservoirs in the Bodri-Kuto river basin using the monthly standardized precipitation index (SPI). We used rainfall records of 25 stations in the river basin from 2000 to 2016 and analyzed yearly and monthly rainfall data. The yearly analysis shows that the dry conditions (SPI < −0.5) from 2005 to 2009 affected more than half of the rainfall stations (>50%), whereas the rainfall stations that experienced more dry years included Kedung Wungu, Babadan, Bojong, Ketapang, Sekopek, and Podowaras (more than 9 out of 17 years). The monthly SPI shows that during July, August, and September, all the rainfall stations experience moderately dry or worse conditions (SPI < −0.50). Using 25 rainfall stations, we determined the spatial spread of dry conditions using monthly SPI values from July, August, and September. Overlay of the spatial spread of dry conditions with the location of small reservoirs can be used to evaluate the suitability of small reservoir locations. We found that 1 (3%) location is very suitable, 7 (21%) locations are suitable, 24 (73%) locations are moderately suitable, and 1 (3%) location is less suitable. The findings indicate that the spatial distribution of SPI can be used as an additional criterion for evaluating the suitability of small reservoirs’ locations should technically ideal locations be unavailable.

Site suitability analysis for the construction of water reservoirs in drought‐prone areas of Bangladesh using geospatial techniques

“…Quick recharge to groundwater will occur in areas with shallow depth of water table (Figure 4b and Table 2). A site with high rainfall intensity was given priority so that the reservoir can store excess water (Figure 5a) (Mukherjee & Singh, 2020; Suharyanto et al, 2020). Forest/dense vegetation destruction is highly discouraged (Tsiko & Haile, 2011).…”

“…From the catchment perspective, it is very important to realize that different types of small impoundments provide various types of ecosystem service that includes groundwater recharge, storage of floodwater, sediment trapping, nutrient retention/removal, support for food chains, fisheries production, habitat for wildlife, recreation, and micro‐climate stabilization (MEA, 2005; Rahaman et al, 2019). Therefore, to reverse the degradation of catchment's hydrological condition, water reservoirs have crucial importance, because of their multi‐dimensional ecosystem services, which not only improve the quality of catchment's water resources but also create opportunity for livelihood improvement (Kar et al, 2020; Suharyanto et al, 2020; Tsiko & Haile, 2011). Bangladesh Delta Management 2100 also emphasized water reservoir creation in the northwest region (General Planning Division, 2018).…”

“…In this process, a lot of spatial data is required to handle and analyze in a spatial decision making process with a multi‐criteria environment. Geographic information system and remote sensing techniques were found to be the most appropriate and reliable techniques to process a vast amount of geospatial data (Ahmed et al, 2021; Kar et al, 2020; Olabode et al, 2021; Suharyanto et al, 2020). In this study, we used these techniques to prepare and process the relevant criteria in the selection of water reservoirs.…”

GIS Modeling to Climate Change Adaptation by Reducing Evaporation in Water Reservoirs: Smart Location Technique of Minimal Evaporation Reservoirs (GIS-MER)

“…The diverse methods provide results with large discrepancies, with evaporation losses ranging from 6% to 17% [7]. It is probably more useful to take into account the spatial distribution of the standardized precipitation index (SPI) as additional criteria for evaluating the suitability of small reservoirs [30].…”