Global Drought Monitoring Service through the GEOSS Architecture ...

Architectural Implementation Pilot, Phase 3 Version: 2.0
Global Drought Monitoring and European Drought
Observatory-Water SBA Engineering Report
Date: 11/Feb/2011
2.2.1.6 Hydrologic Monitoring
Hydrologic drought monitoring measures and forecasts the amount of water in lakes, rivers, and
aquifers. 16 Drought takes longer to show up in hydrological systems than in agriculture,
especially when reservoirs and rivers are managed to balance the extremes of wet and dry years.
Snow is a major component of water supply in the western United States.
2.3 Government of Canada Drought Coverage
Canada in 2004 extended drought mapping coverage from agricultural areas to remainder
of the Canada Provinces. Canada does not carry out drought mapping within the territories
(Yukon, Northwest territories, and Nunavut north-of-tree line and permafrost underlain areas).
Near-Real-Time monitoring is carried out for 508 of 761 ground-based stations by Agriculture
and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)(Hadwen2008) which runs a national drought model, in which
Standard Precipitation Index is calculated, soil moisture (as percent of average and difference
from normal), and Palmer Drought Severity Index.
2.4 Commonwealth of Australia Drought Monitoring
Water issues are now considered among the most important drivers and constraints on natural
resource management in Australia; from environmental hazards like salinity and drought,
through to security of urban and rural water supplies. At present, Australia has no
comprehensive, consistent source of information on the water balance of its landscapes; that is,
on the relationship between rainfall, evaporation, transpiration, soil moisture, runoff and
drainage to ground and surface water. A better understanding of water availability is needed
across the entire country and is relevant to the implementation of key Australian Government
policies such as Exceptional Circumstances, the National Water Initiative, the Prime Minister’s
National Plan for Water Security and policies in support of improved natural resource
management.
2.4.1 Commonwealth of Australia Water Availability Project
The Australian Water Availability Project is a partnership established in 2004, between the
Bureau of Rural Sciences, CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian National
University. The project aim is to develop an operational system for estimating soil moisture and
other components of the water balance, at scales ranging from five kilometers (km) to all
Australia, over time-periods ranging from daily to decades. Data from ground-based climate
measurements, remote sensing and models (water, plant and climate) are being combined to
produce maps of historic and current levels of all the main components of the landscape water
balance, including rainfall, evaporation, transpiration, available soil moisture, runoff, stream
flow and deep drainage. The future challenge is to deliver a fully web operational system,
including underpinning procedures for robust real-time product delivery, continuous
16 http://www.drought.gov/portal/server.pt/community/hydrological_monitoring/224
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