Klamath Basin Rangeland Trust Builds a Surface Water, Groundwater, and Vegetation Monitoring Network With GIS

As well as being a valuable tool in the monitoring network design, GIS was heavily used to generate figures that have been used in reports and presentations to a variety of federal agencies, potential private funding sources, and local ranchers.

Large Drainage Basin in Southern Oregon and Northern California (GIS and groundwater).

The Klamath Basin Rangeland Trust (KBRT) was created in response to the current water crisis in the Klamath Basin, a large drainage basin that is located in southern Oregon and northern California in the western United States. The water crisis was widely publicized in the summer of 2001 when the need to supply sufficient water resources to endangered and threatened fish species (including the Klamath River coho salmon, interior redband trout, bull trout, Lost River sucker, and shortnose sucker) resulted in the shutdown of irrigation water to farmers in the Klamath Project Irrigation District and the loss of their crops. The goal of KBRT is to increase the quantity and quality of water available for use by both farmers and fish in the basin by changing land management techniques and conserving irrigation water high in the Upper Klamath Basin.

KBRT has focused its efforts in the Wood River Valley, a small drainage area in the Upper Klamath Basin. The majority of land in the valley is currently used for high-density cattle grazing, which is supported by extensive irrigation and drainage systems that divert water from the spring-fed creeks and rivers onto pastures and that drain the low-lying, wetland areas, allowing cattle to forage. Although this valley makes up only 5 percent of the land area in the upper watershed, almost 25 percent of the water supplied to Upper Klamath Lake originates in this valley due to the high density of artesian springs. KBRT focused on the Wood River Valley because, with such a large amount of water originating from a relatively small area, land use changes by only about 15 ranching operations could significantly augment water supplies to Upper Klamath Lake and other downstream water needs. In 2002, KBRT implemented a new land and water management plan to achieve three goals:

Improving GIS Access to Clean Water in Sub-Saharan Africa

Clean drinking water is hard to find in Mayange, Rwanda (GIS and Groundwater).

That's why a group of university students and two professors from the University of Redlands (U of R) in Redlands, California, traveled to this African region. Using the Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment they brought along, they mapped the area's water sources and collected water use information. Their survey is helping improve access to clean drinking water in the community and in similar communities across sub-Saharan Africa.

This map shows building density and estimated housing expansion areas in the Mayange sector.

The maps are useful in providing local sustainable development programs with accurate locations of where people get their water. For example, the data can be used to identify areas where water sources are contaminated and support decisions about improving water quality, such as how to protect an open pit water source or where to dig a new water source. Ultimately, this field collection and mapping model may be used for mapping other water networks in Rwanda and other parts of Africa and to contribute to the implementation of sustainable practices in impoverished nations.

"Anything that we can do to improve water quality is going to have a major impact on the population," says Maxwell Baber, Ph.D., associate professor in the Master of Science in Geographic Information Science program at U of R. Baber and Katherine Noble-Goodman, a visiting lecturer in environmental studies at the university, led U of R undergraduate environmental studies students to the rural Mayange sector in 2008 and 2009.