May 17, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Nature Conservancy and IBM hope to harness the power of technology to conserve the world’s great rivers.
By working together, the charity and the information-technology giant plan to develop a computer-modeling system that will bring together multiple sets of data about water quantity, climate, fisheries, rainfall, vegetation, and other topics to simulate the behavior of river basins. The tool would then allow managers to see the tradeoffs that different policy options present.
“The challenge in managing large river systems is that for decisions that you’re making in one part of the basin — say cutting of forest or building a dam in the headwaters — the most significant consequences may not be felt for hundreds of miles downstream,” says Michael Reuter, director of the Great Rivers Partnership at the Arlington, Va., environmental organization.
But too often, says Mr. Reuter, decision makers have had access only to information about their particular part of the equation. He says dam operators look at water-flow levels. Agricultural experts look at soil loss, and drinking-water engineers look at water quality.
With the new technology, “you could do what we call scenario planning,” says Paul West, an associate scientist at the Nature Conservancy. Decision makers could look at “what would happen if we change fertilization practices in Area A? How would that influence food production, water quantity, water quality?”
The system is being developed in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy’s work on Brazil’s upper Paraguay and Paraná rivers. A test version should be available within a year, and should be flexible enough to be used in other river basins where the organization works, such as the Mississippi River in the United States, the Yangtze River in China, and the Zambezi River in Africa.
Says Mr. Reuter: “We believe that armed with good information people will make good decisions.”
For more information: Go to http://www.nature.org/wherewework/greatrivers.
