A publicly available GIS-based web platform for reservoir inundation mapping in the lower Mekong region

Abstract Dam construction in mainland Southeast Asia has increased substantially in recent years. Most dams have the potential to generate value, however, potential and existing impacts include alterations in water regimes, loss and degradation of natural forests and bio-diversity. For mapping impacts, we have developed the Reservoir Mapping Tool for the greater Mekong region designed in ArcGIS Desktop 10.5 ModelBuilder, with dam point location and digital elevation model SRTM-30 m on a publicly available web interface which provides inundated area and dam volume based on user inputs. We validate our results and find excellent agreement with ground data from the Lanh Ra dam located in Vietnam. Further validation and error quantification are done comparing results of three different DEMS's and compared with reported values. We also illustrate various application areas using this information in combination with other geospatial layers, which could provide key inputs towards assessing overall social impacts of dams.

[1]  Julian Kirchherr,et al.  The interplay of activists and dam developers: the case of Myanmar’s mega-dams , 2016 .

[2]  David J. Ganz,et al.  On Spatially Distributed Hydrological Ecosystem Services: Bridging the Quantitative Information Gap using Remote Sensing and Hydrological Models , 2017 .

[3]  N. Arnell,et al.  The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale , 2016, Climatic Change.

[4]  Matti Kummu,et al.  Observed river discharge changes due to hydropower operations in the Upper Mekong Basin , 2017 .

[5]  Julian Kirchherr,et al.  The Social Impacts of Dams: A New Framework for Scholarly Analysis , 2016 .

[6]  Julien J. Harou,et al.  Using many-objective trade-off analysis to help dams promote economic development, protect the poor and enhance ecological health , 2014 .

[7]  K. Tockner,et al.  A global boom in hydropower dam construction , 2014, Aquatic Sciences.

[8]  Frauke Urban,et al.  Large dams, energy justice and the divergence between international, national and local developmental needs and priorities in the global South , 2018, Energy Research & Social Science.

[9]  Bryan Tilt,et al.  Social impacts of large dam projects: a comparison of international case studies and implications for best practice. , 2009, Journal of environmental management.

[10]  P. T. Nhung,et al.  Changing Land Access of Resettled People Due to Dam Construction in Binh Thanh Commune , 2017 .

[11]  Kengo Sunada,et al.  Population Growth and Natural-Resources Pressures in the Mekong River Basin , 2008, Ambio.

[12]  Jianhui Huang,et al.  The Three Gorges Dam: an ecological perspective , 2004 .

[13]  David Saah,et al.  A Self-Calibrating Runoff and Streamflow Remote Sensing Model for Ungauged Basins Using Open-Access Earth Observation Data , 2017, Remote. Sens..

[14]  Deborah Lawrence,et al.  Effects of tropical deforestation on climate and agriculture , 2015 .

[15]  Austin Troy,et al.  An Operational Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) Designed Platform for Vegetation Monitoring at Planetary Scale , 2018, Remote. Sens..

[16]  David A. Seal,et al.  The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission , 2007 .

[17]  Alice C Hughes,et al.  Understanding the drivers of Southeast Asian biodiversity loss , 2017 .

[18]  Anders F. Poulsen,et al.  DEEP POOLS IN THE MEKONG RIVER , 2001 .

[19]  S. Levin,et al.  Trading-off fish biodiversity, food security, and hydropower in the Mekong River Basin , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[20]  Linyu Xu,et al.  Ecological compensation for inundated habitats in hydropower developments based on carbon stock balance , 2016 .

[21]  Jianchu Xu,et al.  Mekong Hydropower Development , 2011, Science.

[22]  David J. Ganz,et al.  Historical and Operational Monitoring of Surface Sediments in the Lower Mekong Basin Using Landsat and Google Earth Engine Cloud Computing , 2018, Remote. Sens..

[23]  J. Quintero,et al.  Good Dams and Bad Dams : Environmental Criteria for Site Selection of Hydroelectric Projects , 2003 .

[24]  Dominique Égré,et al.  Social impact assessments of large dams throughout the world: lessons learned over two decades , 2003 .

[25]  Atul K. Jain,et al.  Global change pressures on soils from land use and management , 2016, Global change biology.

[26]  D. Loucks,et al.  Managing flow, sediment, and hydropower regimes in the Sre Pok, Se San, and Se Kong Rivers of the Mekong basin , 2014 .

[27]  Andrew Jarvis,et al.  Hole-filled SRTM for the globe Version 4 , 2008 .

[28]  Pu Wang,et al.  A framework for social impact analysis of large dams: a case study of cascading dams on the Upper-Mekong River, China. , 2012, Journal of environmental management.

[29]  Ismail Elkhrachy,et al.  Vertical accuracy assessment for SRTM and ASTER Digital Elevation Models: A case study of Najran city, Saudi Arabia , 2017, Ain Shams Engineering Journal.

[30]  David Saah,et al.  Mapping Plantations in Myanmar by Fusing Landsat-8, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 Data along with Systematic Error Quantification , 2019, Remote. Sens..

[31]  John Gallant,et al.  An automated and rapid method for identifying dam wall locations and estimating reservoir yield over large areas , 2017, Environ. Model. Softw..

[32]  Hideki Kanamaru,et al.  Projected Impact of Climate Change on Hydrological Regimes in the Philippines , 2016, PloS one.

[33]  P. Hirsch,et al.  The shifting regional geopolitics of Mekong dams , 2016 .