knowledge, information and data has been revamped by ICIMOD in 2009 (http://www.icimod.org/hkh-friend).
The website has been updated and upgraded making use of the emerging Internet technologies in order to
provide a more user-friendly access to the website with a new look-and-feel. The key features of the new HKH FRIEND website include improved search engine, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and a Content Management System (CMS). A brief description of these features is provided below:
Search friendly: The new HKH FRIEND website provides advanced text-search facilities, which was not available with the previous version of the website.
Really Simple Syndication Feeds: Visitors can now easily update themselves automatically by subscribing to the RSS feeds available at the bottom of every page. By subscribing to RSS feeds, visitors have the option of obtaining updates on a particular webpage by email or RSS software without having to visit the webpage.
Content Management System: The new website is based on CMS which allows the administrators to update the website without any technical knowledge. Administrators can update the website through an explanatory visual user-interface.
The website menu can also be customized as desired and the system also provides an easy interface for uploading and managing documents and photographs.
A plan has also been developed to replace the current Regional Hydrological Data Centre (RHDC) database with a more efficient and web-friendly database that exploits the latest state-of-the-art in web database technologies.
Figure 8.2 A screenshot of the website and database
8.3 Research Projects
HKH FRIEND through its research groups has been holding various types of trainings and doing research based projects. This section summarizes the activities of HKH FRIEND since 2007. It has to be noted that due to the limited funding resources, activities of the research groups are mainly focusing on capacity building and knowledge transfer, e.g.
training courses and workshops.
8.3.1 Flood & Low Flow
Under the flood research group a project on “Flood risk and vulnerability mapping using GIS: A case study from Ratu river in Central Nepal” has been conducted. The study used GIS and remote sensing data to map risk vulnerability and sought to identify community-based disaster mitigation activities to reduce loss of life and property. A paper entitled
“Preparing for Flood Disaster: Mapping and Assessing Hazard in the Ratu Watershed, Nepal (2007)” by Narendra Raj Khannal, Mandira Shresthan and Moti Lal Chimire has been published under this project.
8.3.2 Snow & Glaciers
An International Workshop on Snow, Ice, Glacier and Avalanches together with the Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, from 7 to 9 January 2008 has been carried out in collaboration with the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE), Department of Science and Technology (DST) and UNESCO. The conference was a platform to share knowledge and field experiences on snow cover mapping, snow pack characteristics and runoff modelling; polar ice sheets; glacier inventory and mass balance studies; and snow avalanche prediction and dynamics. As a result, the ‘Proceedings of the International Workshop on Snow, Ice, Glacier and Avalanches’ was published by Tata McGraw-Hill in 2008.
Another activity carried out by the snow and glacier research group was a 20-day research-cum-training expedition to the Yala Glacier, Langtang in Kathmandu, Nepal during 27 April to 15 May 2009, to study and monitor the Glacier Mass Balance. The course was organized by HKH FRIEND, ICIMOD, and UNESCO IHP Nepal, Delhi and Paris. This training programme was to train researchers from the Hindu-Kush Himalayan and the Central Asian region and
encourage them to work on glacier mass balance monitoring activities. The total participants were 27 including 5 trainers. The participants were from Pakistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Bhutan and Nepal. The revised training ‘Manual for Monitoring the Mass Balance of Mountain Glaciers’
was used by the trainers for this training. As part of this training a 10 days field visit was organized in Yala Glacier in Langtang, Nepal. The group of international trainers was led by Georg Kaser, president of the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) from Innsbruck University, Austria.
8.3.3 Water Quality ASSESS-HKH
A three-year research project, “Assessment System to Evaluate the Ecological Status of Rivers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan” (ASSESS-HKH) which was initiated in April 2005 with financial support from the European Commission came to an end in April 2008 (INCO-CT-2005-00369). The aim of the project was to develop a methodology for assessing ecological status of rivers in the region. The project brought together academic and research institutions from Europe (Austria, Czech Republic, and Germany), South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan) and ICIMOD led by the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, Austria. The study focused on a total of 187 river sites in five eco-regions (Himalayan subtropical pine forest, Western Himalayan broadleaf forests, Eastern Himalayan broadleaf forest, Upper Gangetic plains moist deciduous forest and the Lower Gangetic moist deciduous forest) (ASSESS-HKH Methodology Manual 2008).
Water quality monitoring has been conducted in the participating countries. For example, with participation of researchers from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET), Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), Bangladesh, collected and analyzed twice macro invertebrates samples from the rivers surrounding Dhaka City during 22 – 23 April 2008 and 25 – 26 May 2008. According to the analysis, water quality of the surrounding rivers of Dhaka city, namely Tongi Khal river, Turag river, Buriganga, Balu, Sitalakkhya river, are found to be heavily polluted (Barbour and Paul 2010; Hartmann et al. 2010;
Korte 2010; Korte et al. 2010; Ofenböck et al. 2010;
Stubauer et al. 2010). Thus, maintaining sufficient supply of clean water for the growing population is a major challenge in the densely populated Dhaka city.
The project has developed a HKH Eco-Data Manage-ment Tool (ECODAT) to assist scientist for user-friendly evaluation of ecological status of rivers in the region. Water quality maps of river sections representative for the region were produced, which helped to identify environmental “Hot Spots” that required immediate action or sites that are not yet impaired but at high risk. Based on the analysis of the results of ECODAT tool and water quality maps, a sustainable management strategy was prepared and shared during an International Conference held in Dhulikhel, Nepal in March 2008.
8.3.4 Other activities
Due to limited fund resources, the research works in HKH FRIEND were not very active during the year of 2006 – 2010. As presented during the 7th FIGCC meeting held in Adelaide Australia on 19 April 2008, budget is an issue in this region, advices and supports are needed to facilitate reasonable collaboration.
Various research proposals have been made by each research group; however, budget remained the big barrier. Normally the regional UNESCO office and IHP National Committees are partners where the FRIEND projects seek for funds and/or assistance for funds, which, from practical point of view, are mostly devoted to training courses or workshops in the HKH FRIEND programme.
8.4 Conclusions
During 2006 – 2010, HKH FRIEND programme has made efforts to enhance the collaboration between member countries. Four Central Asian (CA) countries have joined the programme since the 4th Steering Committee Meeting held in 2007. Four research groups were established according to social-economic development needs at the region and adaptation needs to the climate change impact.
Research work on “Flood risk and vulnerability mapping using GIS: A case study from Ratu river in Central Nepal”, and “Assessment System to Evaluate the Ecological Status of Rivers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan” (ASSESS-HKH) have been conducted and progress reports have been made and are available online (http://www.assess-hkh.at/mains/progress.php).
Continuous efforts and attention have been paid to further develop joint research projects, knowledge transfer and capacity building. Although the funding
situation is limited HKH FRIEND has organized various training courses and workshop on flood and low flow, glacier and snow mass balance.
References
ASSESS-HKH Methodology Manual (2008) ASSESS-HKH Methodology Manual describing
fundamentals & application of three approaches to evaluate the river quality based on benthic inverte-brates: HKH screening, HKH score bioassessment
& HKH multimetric bioassessment, Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002 – 2006).
Barbour, M.T. and Paul, M.J. (2010) Adding value to water resource management through biological
assessment of rivers. Hydrobiologia (in print; doi: 10.1007/s10750-010-0287-7).
Hartmann, A., Moog, O. and Stubauer, I. (2010) ‘‘HKH screening’’: a field bio-assessment to
evaluate the ecological status of streams in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. Hydrobiologia (in print; doi: 10.1007/s10750-010-0288-6).
Korte, T., Baki, A.B.M., Ofenböck, T., Moog, O., Sharma, S. and Hering, D. (2010) Assessing
river ecological quality using benthic macro invertebrates in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. Hydrobiologia
(in print; doi: 10.1007/s10750-010-0290-z).
Korte, T. (2010) Current and substrate preferences of benthic invertebrates in the rivers of the Hindu
Kush-Himalayan region as indicators of hydro-morphological degradation.
(in print; doi: 10.1007/s10750-010-0291-y).
Ofenböck, T., Moog, O., Sharma, S. and Korte, T.
(2010) Development of the HKHbios: a new biotic score to assess the river quality in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya. Hydrobiologia (in print; doi: 10.1007/s10750-010-0289-5).
Stubauer, I., Hering, D., Korte, T., Hoffmann, A., Brabec, K., Sharma, S., Shrestha, M., Kahlown,
M.A., Tahir, M.A., Kumar, A., Sharma, M.P., Bari, M.F., Badruzzaman, A.B.M., Chhopel, G.K.
and Moog, O. (2010) The development of an assessment system to evaluate the ecological status of rivers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region: introduction to the special feature.
Hydrobiologia
(in print; doi: 10.1007/s10750-010-0286-8).
9.1 Introduction
9.1.1 Regional Characteristics
The river Nile is notable among the largest rivers of the world with the astounding civilization along its banks for more than 7000 years. The catchment area of the Nile basin is about 3,349,000 km², which approximately represents one tenth of the area of Africa. The length of the main stream of the river Nile from its mouth on the Mediterranean Sea to its remote source, at the head of river Luvironza, is nearly 6,671 km. The catchment of the river Nile embraces parts of many countries, namely: Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, R D Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt. These 10 countries contain 40 % of the African population: 263 million inhabi-tants (in 1993), half of which is estimated to live in the Nile Basin. The population density in the well-irrigated parts of the basin is more than 386 per km².
Farmers – raising beans, corn, cotton, millet, rice and wheat – form the largest group. The population is considered to be among the poorest in the world. A map of the Nile River Basin is shown in Figure 9.1.
The flow in the Nile River Basin is severely influenced by the climatic regions it occupies. The downstream part of the basin receives limited precipitation and about two third of the basin lies in the semi-arid and arid zones.
9.1.2 Nile FRIEND Project
The Nile FRIEND Project was initiated by UNESCO in March 1996. It aims at creating more understanding and quantification of the river Nile system in order to enhance the management of the Nile water resources
and to improve the planning of water resources projects in the Nile Basin countries. This will ultimately contribute to meet the basic human needs of safe and clean water supply as targeted in the UN Millennium Development Goals as well as to promote sustainable development of the region by securing sufficient quantity of water for agricultural and industrial and other sectors. The Nile FRIEND is, therefore, a very important project in the context of the regional North-South and South-South cooperation.
UNESCO was able to secure funds through the UNESCO-Flanders Science Fund-In-Trust (FUST) Cooperation for the project of an amount of US$
929,700 for the first phase of the project covering the period 2001 – 2006 and US$ 958,345 for the second phase of the project covering the period 2006 – 2011.
The project is executed by UNESCO Cairo Office.
Six Nile basin countries showed interest and willingness to participate in the project, namely:
Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia Sudan and Egypt. However, the project is opened to all interes-ted other Nile basin countries. The project is mainly implemented by several key water institutions in the Nile countries, namely: The Water Resources Research Institute of Egypt, UNESCO-Chair in Water Resources of Sudan, University of Dar Es
Salaam of Tanzania, University of Nairobi of Kenya, The Ministry of Water Resources of Ethiopia, Ministry of Water and Environment and Makerere University of Uganda.
Within the framework of the second phase of the FUST Nile FRIEND project, the research themes focus on the use of models in view of the analysis of integrated water resources management guidelines or scenario’s. Climate variability and land use changes
Figure 9.1 The Nile Basin (Source: World Bank, 2000).
are examples of management problems that can be addressed. There are 5 research themes included, namely:
Hydrologic Modelling Component, coordinated by the University of Dar Es Salaam of Tanzania.
Erosion and Sediment Transport Modelling component, coordinated by the UNESCO-Chair in Water Resources of Sudan.
Stochastic Modelling component, coordinated by the University of Nairobi of Kenya.
Eco-hydrology Component, Coordinated by Makerere University of Uganda.
Integrated Water Resources Management, coordinated by the Water Resources Research Institute of Egypt.
A network of water resources experts in the Nile basin and the Flemish community has been established.
Research teams have been defined comprising 2 re-searchers/component/country including young scientists.
The second phase continues to serve as a platform for the exchange of experience and hydrological knowledge between researchers and scientists in the Nile countries and the Flemish community. This report covers the main activities during the period 2006 – 2010.