Climate Related Work Plan:

          The work plan is divided into sections for A) Climate, B) Hydrology, Vegetation and Habitat, C) Elephant Management and D) Integration and Synthesis.  Out of these, it is  for Section A and the Hydrology portion of Section B that the IRI team bears responsbility.  These are  spelled out in detail below.

Section A: Climate

In May 2000, the IRI entered into a partnership with the Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka to provide climate and hydrological forecasts for the Mahaweli and Walawe River Basins. The methodology we propose will draw upon these high quality, weather, climate and hydrological model output already developed for this region by IRI.  

The principal sections of this portion of the project will be:

1.      Data Collection: Gaps in the IRI archives of climate data for Sri Lanka will be filled with data collected from the Sri Lankan Departments of Meteorology and Irrigation. Printed format data will be entered by hand by a research assistant. Thereafter these data will be incorporated into the IRI data library for ready access, manipulation and visualization. 

2.      Construction of High-Resolution Climatology : Based on the data that is available for Sri Lanka for 400 stations, interpolation techniques will be used to construct climatologies of rainfall and temperature at a 1-km grid resolution for use in GIS.

3.      Downscaling of Seasonal Climate Forecasts : The  GCM seasonal climate forecasts available at IRI are typically at a scale of about 250 km. These forecasts will be downscaled to the available stations and the high resolution grid in the South-East of the island using relationships between IRI retrospective forecasts and actual observed climate

Among the fundamental questions underlying our understanding of the systems supporting elephants for the proposed study area are:

-          What is the location, composition, structure, extent and use of the natural resources (vegetation and surface water) and built systems present within the region

-          How sensitive are these systems to variability in climate (temperature and precipitation) and can these key variables be forecast using downscaling systems?

-          How best can these patterns and processes be captured using digital geospatial technologies

Major Steps

§         Search for and compile existing digital hydrology, land cover, habitat, NDVI history, elevation, geology and soils data

§         Generate digital layers for detailed cover type, vegetation, and biophysical (elevation, slope, aspect, soil moisture) and potential elephant habitat

§         Compare historic patterns and correlations between vegetation (NDVI) data and climate

§         Perform downscaling of climate predictions to variables related to the key features that impact elephant distribution, namely water and vegetation. This will include downscaling to in-situ streamflow and hydrological analysis of streamflows, and NDVI.

Sub-Section 1: Climate impact on available water for elephants:

Hydrological Analysis of Surface and Sub-surface Water

The main focus will be:

1.      Data Collection: A thorough hydrological data search will be conducted, with the assistance of t he Irrigation Department, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and the Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka.

2.      Statistical downscaling of climate predictions for streamflow estimation. The critical in-situ variable in hydrological modeling is streamflow. Techniques similar to that used for downscaling climate predictions to station climate will be used to downscale climate forecasts to streamflow forecasts in key sites on the rivers of the project area. (Mahaweli, Menik, Walawe).

3.      Hydrological Analysis:  Observations and downscaled forecasts of streamflow will be extended to other variables such as soil moisture (plant available) and availability of water (elephant available) in surficial features in parks, using hydrologic models, statistical models and subjective inference.