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Construction of a hydro-meteorological station at Abramov Glacier, Kyrgyzstan. Image: GFZ
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GFZ Researchers Build Water Monitoring in Kyrgyzstan
Water often is a scarce resource in Central Asia. Therefore it is all the more important to systematically gather data on the availability and use of water in order to forecast shortages and to develop solutions for future water management. However, the operation of hydrometeorology stations is extremely costly in particular in those remote high mountain regions that are of particular significance as water source areas. Therefore researchers from the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (GFZ) have developed measuring stations that can be operated by remote control. Together with scientists from the Central-Asian Institute of Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Kyrgyzstan, they now have built a network of monitoring stations for gathering weather data in high mountain areas, for example, on the Abramov glacier in the Alay Mountains.
The measuring network is part of the research work conducted by the "Water Initiative Central Asia", which was established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2008. The project "Water in Central Asia” (CAWa), which is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, will scientifically evaluate the data under the leadership of the GFZ and place the results at the disposal of the Central Asian states. The highly time-resolved data from these new high-tech stations, transmitted almost in real time via satellite, can be used both for weather forecasts and for scientific questions such as, for example, estimating the consequences of climate change or the monitoring of high mountain glaciers. In the next phase, the network is to be extended to include other states in Central Asia, because the water problem can only be solved in a cross-boundary approach.
