Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
3-2015
Abstract
The Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) is the custodian of ten national monitoring programs. The overall aim of this project is to undertake an evaluation of each monitoring network, in its present condition, and to redesign and realign the network based on scientific analysis and the strategic and management objectives of DWS and of the country as a whole. The water resources monitoring network will be optimised to ensure sustainable, relevant and up-to-date data of an acceptable quality. This Network Inventory Task focused on the production of maps to illustrate the spatial distribution of the existing monitoring stations for these ten monitoring programs. The deliverable from this Network Inventory task, together the User Requirements Task will be used to identify shortcomings in the current networks.The metadata from each of the ten monitoring networks was analysed and descriptive labels were developed for each station to describe the temporal information (record period), open/closed, completeness, etc. This task was undertaken by a team of specialists, one for each of the following categories of data:
Surface water quantity.
Surface water quality.
Groundwater levels and quality.
Biophysical Data
Hydro-meteorology
This was followed by the development of five thematic maps with information on the spatial distribution of these ten monitoring points per new Water Management Area (WMA) have been compiled. Even though other institutions in South Africa are also collecting surface water, groundwater, Hydro-meteorological, water quality, eco-health, mostly for their own interests and applications, only the Hydro-meteorological networks of ARC and SAWS data were included on these maps since these data are used daily by DWS. Due to an abundance of groundwater stations in a number of WMA’s, station numbers, rather than the detailed developed labels, were adopted for labeling the groundwater maps. The detailed groundwater labels are included as Appendix A.
Journal Title
REVIEW, EVALUATION AND OPTIMISATION OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WATER RESOURCES MONITORING NETWORK
Place of Publication
Pretoria
Volume
2: Map Book
First Page
19
Last Page
24
Recommended Citation
South Africa. (2015). Network Inventory Map Book 4: Pongola-Mtamvuna. REVIEW, EVALUATION AND OPTIMISATION OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WATER RESOURCES MONITORING NETWORK, 2: Map Book, 19-24. Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/limpopo-policy/4
Included in
Environmental Engineering Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Natural Resources Law Commons, Water Law Commons
