GLOWA Volta Phase II

From Concepts to Application

submitted to
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
by the
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn

October 2002

Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung (ZEF)

Institut für Städtebau, Bodenordnung und Kulturtechnik

In cooperation with:
Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (IMK-IFU)
Institut für Tropenhygiene und Öffentliches Gesundheitswesen, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg
Meteorology Department, Wageningen University
Lehrstuhl für Fernerkundung, Universität Würzburg

Partners in Ghana und Burkina Faso:

Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana
Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles (INERA), Burkina Faso
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Ghana
Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), Ghana
Water Research Institute (WRI), Ghana
 Table of Content

Abbreviations and Acronyms.........................................................................................3

1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................5
1.1 International and national cooperation.................................................................6
1.2 Goals of second phase........................................................................................7
1.2.1 Finalize what was started .............................................................................7
1.2.2 Technical integration of project components.................................................7
1.2.3 Development of Decision Support System....................................................7
1.2.4 Inclusion of Burkina Faso .............................................................................9
1.3 Goal setting .........................................................................................................9
1.3.1 Review .........................................................................................................9
1.3.2 Workshops ...................................................................................................9
1.4 Project Organization..........................................................................................10
1.4.1 Sub-projects ...............................................................................................10
1.5 Executive summary ...........................................................................................11
2. ATMOSPHERE..................................................................................................14
2.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................14
2.2 Sub-project A 1: Regional Climate Simulations and Evapotranspiration
Tagging..............................................................................................................15
2.2.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................15
2.2.2 Objectives...................................................................................................16
2.2.3 Methods .....................................................................................................17
2.2.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................17
2.3 Sub-project A 2: Hydro-Meteorological Monitoring System................................18
2.3.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................18
2.3.2 Objectives...................................................................................................19
2.3.3 Methods .....................................................................................................20
2.3.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................21
2.4 Sub-project A 3: Onset of the Rainy Season .....................................................21
2.4.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................21
2.4.2 Objectives...................................................................................................22
2.4.3 Methods .....................................................................................................22
2.4.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................22
2.5 Comment concerning financing .........................................................................23
3. LAND USE.........................................................................................................24
3.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................24
3.2 Sub-project L1: Land use change detection and quantification ..........................26
3.2.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................26
3.2.2 Objectives...................................................................................................27
3.2.3 Methods .....................................................................................................27
3.2.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................28
3.3 Sub-project L2: Soil characterization .................................................................28
3.3.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................28
3.3.2 Objectives...................................................................................................28
3.3.3 Methods .....................................................................................................28
3.3.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................29
3.4 Sub-project L3: Vegetation Dynamics................................................................29
3.4.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................29
3.4.2 Objectives...................................................................................................30
3.4.3 Methods .....................................................................................................30
3.4.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................31

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 3.5 Sub-project L4: Modeling spatial and temporal upscaling of erosion and
hydrological processes.......................................................................................31
3.5.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................31
3.5.2 Objectives...................................................................................................32
3.5.3 Methods .....................................................................................................32
3.5.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................34
3.6 Sub-project L5: Land use-change prediction model (LUCC modeling)...............34
3.6.1 Research Needs.........................................................................................34
3.6.2. Objectives..................................................................................................35
3.6.3. Methods ....................................................................................................35
3.6.4. Milestones .................................................................................................38
4. WATER USE .....................................................................................................39
4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................39
4.2 Sub-project W1 : Runoff and Hydraulic Routing ................................................40
4.2.1 Research needs .........................................................................................40
4.2.2 Objectives...................................................................................................41
4.2.3 Methods .....................................................................................................41
4.2.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................42
4.3 Sub-project W2 : Water and Livelihood .............................................................43
4.3.1 Research needs .........................................................................................43
4.3.2 Objectives...................................................................................................45
4.3.3 Methods .....................................................................................................46
4.3.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................47
4.4 Sub-project W3: Institutional Analysis ................................................................48
4.4.1 Research needs .........................................................................................48
4.4.2 Objectives...................................................................................................50
4.4.3 Methods .....................................................................................................51
4.4.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................52
4.5 Continued Activities...........................................................................................52
5. TECHNICAL INTEGRATION AND DECISION SUPPORT.................................53
5.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................53
5.2 Sub-project D1: Technical integration of socio-economic and environmental
modeling sub-systems .......................................................................................54
5.2.1 Research needs .........................................................................................54
5.2.2 Objectives...................................................................................................56
5.2.3 Methods .....................................................................................................56
5.2.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................57
5.3 Sub-project D2: Household decision making and policy response.....................57
5.3.1 Research needs .........................................................................................57
5.3.2 Objectives...................................................................................................57
5.3.3 Methods .....................................................................................................58
5.3.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................58
5.4 Sub-project D3: Experimental application of scientific knowledge (policy pilot
study).................................................................................................................59
5.4.1 Research needs .........................................................................................59
5.4.2 Objectives...................................................................................................59
5.4.3 Methods .....................................................................................................60
5.4.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................60
5.5 Sub-project D4: Initiation of policy dialogue at basin level .................................61
5.5.1 Research needs .........................................................................................61
5.5.2 Objectives...................................................................................................61
5.5.3 Methods .....................................................................................................61
5.5.4 Milestones ..................................................................................................62
5.6 Continued Activities...........................................................................................62
6. REFERENCES ..................................................................................................63

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Abbreviations and Acronyms

AHAS Advanced Hydrological Analysis System

ANN Artificial Neural Networks
BF Burkina Faso
CIRAD Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique
pour le Développement
DAAD Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic
Exchange Service)
DGH Direction Générale de l’Hydraulique of the MEE
DKRZ Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum
DSS Decision Support System
ENSO El Nino Southern Oscillation
ESA External Support Agencies
FZK Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (Research Center in Karlsruhe)
GEF Global Environmental Facility
GIS Geographical Information System
GOG Government of Ghana
GIRE Gestion Intégrée des Ressources en Eau (= IMWR)
GV-LUDAS GLOWA Volta Land Use Dynamic Simulator
ICOUR Irrigation Company of the Upper East Region
GLSS Ghana Living Standard Survey
IMK-IFU Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung – Atmosphärische
Umweltforschung
IWMI International Water Management Institute
INERA Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles
ISSER Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research,
University ofGhana
IWRM Integrated Water Resources Management
LAI Leaf Area Index
LUCC Land Use and Cover Change
MAM Multi-scale Adaptive Model
MEE Ministère de l’Environnement et de l’Eau
MRU Management Response Unit
MSG Meteosat Second Generation
NDVI Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
ONEA Office National de l’Eau et de Assainissement
PSP Private Sector Participation
PCA Principal Component Analysis
RS Remote Sensing
RSRG Remote Sensing Research Group
SARI Savanna Research Institute

3
SAVI Soil-adjusted Vegetation Index
SEBAL Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land
SRI Soil Research Institute
SST Sea Surface Temperature
SVD Singular Value Decomposition
UER Upper East Region
UML Unified Modeling Language
UNCHS United Nations Centre for Human Settlement
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
WASIM Water Balance Simulation Model
WMO World Meteorological Organisation
WRC Water Resources Commission
WRI Water Research Institute
ZEF Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung
(Center for Development Research)

4
 INTRODUCTION

GLOWA Volta Phase II: From Concepts to Application

1. INTRODUCTION

The second phase of the GLOWA Volta Project builds on results from the first phase.
These results are reflected in the strategic goals of the first phase:
project establishment, mainly in Ghana
model selection, including collection of data for calibration and validation
conceptual integration of disciplinary models.
During the first phase, the major efforts were devoted to developing conceptual
frameworks, assessing feasibility of proposed models for various sub-projects, and building
capacity both in Germany and Ghana. Those efforts yielded valuable outputs over the last
three years and now enable us to move into the next phase that focuses on integration of
research findings and building a Decision Support System (DSS).
The project is now well established in Ghana, both logistically with three field sites and a
complete research infrastructure, and institutionally. Institutionally, the project has the ear
of decision makers at the highest level as witnessed by the active participation of the
Ministers of Food and Agriculture and of Works and Housing at the planning workshop for
phase II in Accra in July 2002.
The selection, calibration and validation of existing models to describe processes within the
basin are almost finished. The Ph.D. students who worked on the models will finalize their
theses early in the second phase (2003/2004).
Scientifically perhaps most interesting was the conceptual integration, or the development
of new methods and models that meaningfully integrate data and findings from different
disciplines. This included measurements that bridge the scale gap between hydrology and
meteorology, development of a common sampling frame for gathering social and physical
data, and a water use optimization model that accommodates hydrological and institutional
constraints. We use the term "conceptual integration" to distinguish it from "technical
integration", which focuses on data exchange between models.
The central objectives of the GLOWA Volta project remain as they were defined in the first
proposal:
analysis of the physical and socio-economic determinants of
the hydrological cycle,
and, based on this,
development of a scientifically sound Decision Support
System (DSS) for the assessment, sustainable use and
development of water resources in the Volta Basin.
To attain these central objectives, four strategic goals are defined for the second phase of
the project:
• Finalize what was started in the first phase
• Technical integration
• Decision Support System
• Project coverage of Burkina Faso
Below, we describe these goals in some detail. Generally, we are moving towards
operationalization of acquired knowledge and models. At the end of the second phase, we
want to have tangible products that are actually used for analysis and decision support. In
the remainder of this introduction we will briefly elaborate upon cooperation with other
projects, the four strategic goals of the second phase, the goal setting process, and the
project organization.

5
 INTRODUCTION

1.1 International and national cooperation

Although not a goal as such, the second phase will show further internationalization of the
project. BMBF's GLOWA Program seems to be a very timely development, given the
resonance that the project encounters worldwide. Because of GLOWA , UNESCO's HELP
program is seeking to establish its international secretariat in Germany. ZEF was requested
to bring the Volta Basin into the international ADAPT Project, which is part of the Dialogue
on Water and Climate. The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seek close cooperation and have
subsequently included the Volta Basin as one of twelve basins worldwide in the Challenge
Program on Water and Food of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR). This Challenge Program promises long-term commitment and major
resources for issues like integrated watershed management and climate impact analysis.
Especially our local partners stand to gain from this program as it would ensure that the
DSS developed under GLOWA can indeed be maintained and built upon.
Within Ghana, we will continue to work closely with the Water Resources Commission (see
1.2.3 below).
Furthermore, we have started to cooperate with the Volta Basin Research Project (VBRP),
which has already used land use/cover and water balance data from GLOWA Volta in order
to prepare its Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis. VBRP brings together the six riparian
countries of the Volta and is funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). Very
encouraging is also the fact that the Ghanaian government has started to sponsor directly
students within the GLOWA Volta project: Mr. Antwi of the Soil Research Institute who
studies erosion processes, and Mr. Howard from the Mathematical Centre who applies
wavelet analysis to landscape analysis.
The European Union funds a four year project called VinVal that aims at understanding the
impact of the land use intensification of so called Inland Valleys, which are the lower parts
of the landscape and their adjacent watersheds. The scale of interest for VinVal is much
smaller than that of GLOWA Volta. However, the type of data collected at the two test sites,
one in the forest zone of Ghana and one in Eastern Burkina Faso, is very comparable to
the data gathered at the GLOWA experimental watersheds. Besides with our partners
INERA and WRI, we work together with Wageningen University (Netherlands) and
TIMESIS Consulting (Italy).
Within Germany we have received additional financial support from the German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD) and we expect to see continued DAAD support through the
special BMBF DAAD/GLOWA program. With the extension into Burkina Faso we have
developed cooperation with the research group that has evolved from the Collaborative
Research Program (SFB 268) “West African Savanna”, University of Frankfurt, both with
the anthropologists and the botanists, the latter are mainly being involved via BIOTA West
Africa. Much of our vegetation studies for the second phase will actually take place in very
close cooperation with the BIOTA projects W1 and W2. Finally, we work together with the
property rights research group of the Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Mainz.

6
 INTRODUCTION

1.2 Goals of second phase

1.2.1 Finalize what was started

In the first phase, Ph.D. students undertook most field research. Each student covered a
well-defined sub-project that, to a large extent, could stand on its own. The role of the
scientific staff was to supervise the students and ensure integration of the results in the
overall project framework. Some sub-projects, such as "Modeling land use change" and
"River flow", needed inputs from other sub-projects. Consequently, not all sub-projects
could start at the same time. The first Ph.D. students started their preparatory work in
October 2000 and started field work in May 2001. The second set of Ph.D. students started
in October 2001 and commenced field work in 2002. The first-phase proposal foresaw a
period of three to four years for each Ph.D. project. The first (or zeroth) goal of the second
phase is to allow all Ph.D. students to finish their research. This necessary and modest
objective will absorb quite some resources, especially during the first year of the second
phase. It should be noted that this was foreseen and described as such in the first phase
proposal.

1.2.2 Technical integration of project components

In the first phase, three integrative focal points were identified: coupling meteorology and
hydrology; modeling land use change; and water use optimization. These focal points were
conceptual bottlenecks for integration. With the progress made, we now feel confident that
the complete network of models can be put together. We refer to this process as technical
integration and the final product is a Scientific Information System.
Ideally, all models would be fully coupled and run simultaneously both for scientific analysis
and, interactively, for decision support. Practically this is not possible because the
computational capacity, especially with respect to climate simulations, does not exist. The
question now becomes which models should be coupled at which level. This issue actually
poses some interesting scientific challenges. As a first step, analysis of "sensitivity-over-
the-interface" will be performed to establish which variables depend strongly on the
interaction between different models or sub-systems. A simple example may be
"Urbanization" that will have only a small direct impact on atmospheric circulation but a
large impact in terms of demands for food, drinking water, and hydropower. Not all the
variables that depend on the outcome of different sub-systems need to be closely coupled
at code level for each time step. Instead, off-line coupling may suffice that can technically
be established by exchange of information through data files. Land use change, for
example, will depend on weather and climate but the response time is such that it would
suffice to update the land use-change model with new climate data at five or ten year
intervals. Similarly, it would not be necessary to inform MM5 for each fifteen-minute time
step what the new land use is. Finally, there will remain some difficult spots that need code
development and CPU-intensive simulations. For example, given the proven dependence
of weather patterns on soil moisture, it is necessary to couple MM5 closely with a
hydrological model. Complete analysis of how closely all models need to be coupled will be
an important scientific output of the second phase.

1.2.3 Development of Decision Support System

In the discussions with non-technical stakeholders, it became again clear that meaningful
decision support is more than handing over a set of computer models. Operationalization of
scientific knowledge asks for a set of tools such as data visualization and user interfaces
that allow for interactive use of the underlying models. At the same time, our DSS is set in
the context of developing countries. This implies that technical expertise and necessary
environmental monitoring are not in place and need to be developed as well. In this sense,
the DSS that we envisage is really a "system" in that it includes implementation of cost
effective data gathering and capacity building. The DSS is not a turn-key project but a
system that is driven by national and local interests and is continuously updated as new
data and insights become available.

7
 INTRODUCTION

Next year the Water Resources Commission of Ghana (WRC) will start a long-term pilot
project in the Ghanaian part of the White Volta sub-basin to address the issue of integrated
water resources management (see box). WRC has requested the GLOWA Volta Project to
supply scientific knowledge and to provide an institutional analysis of the process.

White Volta Basin Pilot Project of the Water Resources Commission

Desmond O. Manful
The Water Resources Commission (WRC) Act in 1996 was the result of the Government of
Ghana’s recognition of the need for a cross-sectoral and integrated management of the water
resources in the country. The Act gives the WRC a range of responsibilities including the
promotion of scientific investigation, experiment or research into water resources in Ghana.
Within the framework of the WRC’s five-year strategy plan, the Commission has selected the
White Volta Basin (WVB) as the location for the implementation of its second pilot basin
management scheme. Following the successful Densu Basin Pilot Management program, the
WVB pilot was initiated as part of its policy to promote Integrated Water Resources
Management (IWRM) in all major river basins in Ghana. The Commission selected the eastern
part of the Basin to the far north as the focus area. This was done mainly because that part of
the basin is well populated and much more developed in terms of infrastructure as compared to
the western of the part of the basin which consists mainly of forest reserves.
The Commission intends to undertake a number of activities that will eventually lead to the
establishment of a White Volta Basin management board responsible for the implementation of
IWRM in the region. The board will also be responsible for ensuring a good ambiance for
technical co-operation between Ghana and Burkina Faso especially on issues relevant to the
WVB. The initial activities include:
1. An information acquisition exercise that has already yielded a reconnaissance mission
to the region and an initial inventory of IWRM issues in the region.
2. A methodology to motivate stakeholders for collaboration and participation in IWRM in
the WVB
3. The establishment of the institutional framework for IWRM in the WVB including the
Terms of Reference for the organization and working procedures of the WVB Board,
the request of stakeholders for the nomination of preliminary board members, the
setting-up of a basin office and recruitment of a basin co-ordinator
4. The initiation of technical co-operation between Burkina Faso and Ghana

Studies in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and economics will be undertaken by the
Commission with the support of partners to develop these new methods. The Commission has
also suggested a research topic “Perceptions of communities and stakeholders towards the
formulation and implementation of an effective strategy for IWRM in the WVB” to be central in
the initial research activities that will be undertaken in the basin. The rational behind this topic
mainly revolves around the idea of developing an appropriate participatory strategy in the
region.

WRC will organize all stakeholders involved in water management and lead the political
decision making process, something that would have been difficult for (outsider) scientists.
This is an important opportunity for us to learn decision support. What information is really
needed? What are expectations of stakeholder’s vis-à-vis scientists? Do people "believe" in
model outcomes? How can trust be built? Because it concerns a pilot project, it is clear that
there will be a learning process in which WRC and project scientists have the possibility to
iterate. We expect that the pilot project will be a very important opportunity to obtain hands-
on experience with decision support.

8
 INTRODUCTION

1.2.4 Inclusion of Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso covers 43% of the Volta Basin. It covers the higher reaches of the river
network. By including both, Ghana and Burkina Faso, in phase II we will cover 85% of the
basin’s area and over 90% of its population. In the first phase, coverage of Burkina Faso
was limited to non-field activities such as analysis with satellite data and the MM5 model. In
the second phase, field activities need to be included. Main activities are establishment of a
test site North of Ouagadougou, an analysis of the institutions involved in the management
of water resources, and an extension of the common sampling frame for a new survey. Like
in Ghana, extensive participation by national scientists is sought to ensure capacity
building. The number of Ph.D. students from Burkina Faso will not be as high as the
number from Ghana as we will try to accelerate data gathering and capacity building
through consultancies (see also §1.3.1 below).

1.3 Goal setting

The goal setting for the second phase is based on the general goals of the GLOWA
program, the review of the first phase results, and three workshops that were held between
May and August 2002.

1.3.1 Review
The review of the project was very positive. As a result, this proposal for the second phase
is mainly a logical extension of the first phase. Many new ideas and themes can be found
that will keep the scientific excitement high, but there is no breach in the continuity of the
project.
The review made four recommendations for the second phase. The first two
recommendations were to move forward from parameterization of the MM5 atmospheric
model. These activities will indeed not be continued. Instead MM5 will be used for actual
climate runs and for analysis of the on-set of the rainy season. This recommendation also
encouraged us to think more about operationalization of existing knowledge. Given Prof.
Fiedler's retirement next year, it was not possible to establish close cooperation with him as
suggested, although we will cooperate with the Karlsruhe Institute. Also in line with the
overall goal of the second phase, we will move towards a hydro-meteorological monitoring
system in which the MM5 and WASIM models operate together with ground and satellite
measurements.
The third recommendation concerned the comparatively recent water legislation and
interventions by international donor agencies with respect to public institutions dealing with
water management. The most important scientific challenge to be met is to identify the
relative importance of the variables that determine the performance of water management
institutions, including laws, in the two different political settings. The extensive institutional
work in the water use cluster explicitly addresses these issues. Related to this, and also
with respect to the applicability study (AHT-Study) to which the reviewers would like to see
a follow-up, we pay special attention to the privatization of the water sectors in Ghana and
Burkina Faso and possible roles that German companies could play here.
The final recommendation was to continue work with the economic optimization models. It
was already intended that the optimization model would be the nucleus of the DSS. Given
the positive feedback, the model will now also play an important role as focal point for the
technical integration where it will be used to analyze behavior of agents at different levels.

1.3.2 Workshops
Three workshops were held between May and August 2002 to establish the orientation of
the second phase. The first workshop took place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen after the
GLOWA Status Conference and brought together all research partners from Europe and
Africa. Some research gaps were identified such as more integrated analysis of household
water use, including aspects concerning health, livestock, and irrigated horticulture (see
Sub-Project “Water and Livelihood”). The main conclusion was that special attention needs
9
 INTRODUCTION

to be paid to what we call “technical integration” (see Cluster “Technical Integration and
Decision Support”).
The second workshop took place in Accra and gathered different stakeholders from Ghana
such as the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Major (rt.) Courage Quashiga, the Minister of
Works and Housing, Mr. Yaw Barimah, who is responsible for water resources, the Ag.
Director of the Water Resources Commission, Dr. Daniel Adom, and representatives from
the Volta River Authority, the Irrigation Development Authority, and the Ghana Water and
Sanitation Company. It became clear that decision support is more than a set of models.
The Water Resources Commission’s Pilot Project for the White Volta was identified as an
opportunity to learn how to translate science into a Decision Support System. In addition,
some research issues were given high priority such as prediction of the beginning of the
rainy season, vegetation modeling, domestic water use, and institutional analysis at the
District level.
The final workshop took place in August in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. This workshop
mainly served to introduce the project to prospective research partners and to make an
inventory of research issues. As such it was the first step towards realizing the goal of
covering Burkina Faso within the project. We are intensifying our contacts with INERA
regarding both information exchange and recruitment of local research capacity.

1.4 Project Organization

The project is organized in 15 sub-projects that are grouped into four clusters. The three
clusters from the first phase, "Atmosphere", "Land use", and "Water Use", are maintained
in the second phase but we have added the cluster "Technical Integration and Decision
Support" to reflect the updated goals. The shift towards operationalization of the knowledge
gained in the first phase is mainly reflected in the content of the sub-projects. For example,
the scintillometers that were used for calibration of surface-atmosphere models will now be
used with NOAA-AVHRR satellite imagery for hydrological monitoring.
Because sub-projects will be implemented differently than in the first phase, we start with
an overview of how sub-projects will be structured. This is followed by an executive
summary of the contents of the four clusters. Each of the following four chapters then
covers one of the clusters and their sub-projects in detail.

1.4.1 Sub-projects
The basic building blocks of the project are the sub-projects. Each sub-project has a clearly
defined theme. In the first phase, each sub-project was associated with one Ph.D. study. In
the second phase, this will no longer necessarily be the case. It takes three to four years
before the final results of a Ph.D. study become available. In the first phase, which aimed
at basic modeling and data gathering, this was not a real problem. In the second phase,
there is more pressure to produce results early on if the goal of a tangible DSS is to be
attained. As a consequence, the input of human resources is organized in a more diverse
fashion. Besides Ph.D. students and scientific staff, there will be consultancies and Master
or Diploma studies.
For consultancies, scientists from Burkina Faso and Ghana are given a research contract
to fulfill well-defined tasks in a period from one to six months. Typically, such tasks would
be extension of existing techniques over space and/or time. For example, during the first
phase, a method for mapping land use intensity was developed that can deal with the
typical West African savanna mosaic. This method has been applied to the Ghanaian part
of the basin for 1984, 1990, and 1999/2000. In the second phase, the same method needs
to be applied in Burkina Faso. It would not make sense to give such a task to a Ph.D.
student because not many new scientific results are to be expected. Instead, a Burkinabe
scientist will be trained by the project staff and given a consultancy to produce land use
maps for Burkina Faso. Besides the fact that this is cost and time effective, there is also the
clear advantage that this scientist will learn a technique that will be part of the DSS.
10
 INTRODUCTION

In the first phase, it became clear that Master or Diploma students can significantly
contribute to the scientific progress in the project. Support for Master students took place
on an ad hoc basis. Given the positive results and the fact that they produce results in a
short time, there will be more structural support for Master and Diploma students in the
second phase. Besides, many bright African students do not yet have an advanced degree.
Both the British system, which is followed in Ghana, and the French system, followed in
Burkina Faso, provide students with a first degree at the Bachelor level. To tap into this
human resource pool, it is necessary to support students at the Master's level, either at
local universities or in Germany.
In the next chapters, the following structure is used for the description of each sub-project:
1. Research needs
2. Objectives and research questions
3. Methods
4. Milestones

First, research needs are defined that follow logically from the results from the first phase.
These research needs are subsequently supplemented by important issues that came up
during the workshops. Needs and issues are organized under a limited set of research
objectives that define each sub-project thematically. To attain each objective, a set of
associated research questions needs to be answered. In turn, each research question is
addressed by following certain scientific methods. Sometimes, the same methodology,
such as for example the extensive household survey, is used to answer different research
questions. In such cases, the methodology is described only once and simply referred to
under other sub-projects. Internally, the methodologies are translated into research
activities that enter in detailed project and resource planning which are not presented here.
Instead, we only present so called Milestones that are tangible intermediate or final outputs
that can be used to monitor progress. Finally, a brief overview of the needed resources is
given.
In the proposal for the first phase, an overview of the state-of-the-art was included. For the
second phase, we would like to refer to the reviewed 2001 Year Report for our present
state of knowledge.

1.5 Executive summary

The second phase of the GLOWA Volta project is characterized by both continuity and
change. Some important tasks will be continued from the first phase, others were
accomplished and some new challenges have emerged. The second phase will include
new research sites in the Volta Basin in Burkina Faso. The scope of tasks is assigned to
four clusters, each of which hosts a number of sub-projects, which, while pursuing specific
research questions, are linked with one another: Atmosphere, Land Use, Water Use and a
new cluster: Technical Integration and Decision Support.
The atmosphere cluster aims at estimating how water availability and precipitation change
under different climate- and land use-change scenarios. In the second phase, there will be
a clear shift from preparation and parameterization towards application. Continued
activities are the calculation of future climate scenarios, which are very CPU intensive, and
evapotranspiration tagging. The tagging serves to understand which areas are most
sensitive to land use change and in which areas land use change has the largest overall
effect. Because it will not be possible to do interactive climate simulations within the DSS,
knowing these sensitivities ensures that worst and best case land use scenarios are
calculated. New are the development of a hydro-meteorological monitoring system and
analysis of the onset of the rainy season. The monitoring system combines the best
features of remote sensing, ground observations, and weather modeling. Once developed,
this system will enable decision makers in the region to follow the main components of the
water balance in the Volta Basin. The onset of the rainy season was clearly the single-most
important climate issue of concern that came forward during our stakeholder workshops.

11
 INTRODUCTION

The shift in the onset of the rainy season, as observed over the past decades, is a key
climate change parameter that should be well understood before trustworthy climate
predictions can be made. At the same time, we expect that the analysis will enable us to
make short- to mid-term predictions on whether the rainy season has indeed started,
thereby saving farmers in the region enormous costs.
The land use cluster provides detailed information on vegetation, soil, and different land
use types as input parameters to the regional climate and hydrological water balance. The
land use cluster aims to understand interactions between the social and natural
environments in order to model land use changes within the Volta basin. These will in turn
be used to model the effect of land use changes on climatic and hydrological processes in
the atmosphere and water use cluster. Further, it characterizes the soil- and vegetation-
related input parameters and their dynamics for meteorological and hydrological models.
Research on land use-change detection and quantification will be continued in Burkina
Faso. A landscape-based model to predict the spatial distribution of soils will be refined.
Stronger emphasis will be put on the dynamics of vegetation and crop-growth responses to
seasonal fluctuations. Modeling and spatial and temporal upscaling of erosion and
hydrological processes will be expanded to include data from Burkina Faso. Spatial and
temporal scaling issues will be approached by statistical and process-based models. The
land use-change prediction model that has been developed in the first phase will be
developed further. Socio-economic driving forces and natural constraint factors will be
combined to predict land use changes within the basin.
The water use cluster focuses on the sectoral demands and use of water and on its
institutional management framework. Insights gained in the first phase with respect to the
sectoral water use and the institutional framework of water management will be deepened
and followed up in the second phase. Research activities will be extended to the Burkinabe
part of the Volta Basin. In a more differentiated way, the decision making processes and
feedbacks in the water using sectors, including an impact assessment of the supply
conditions and policies on people’s livelihood, will be analyzed and measured both on the
micro- and macro-level. As has been done for Ghana, another socio-economic framework
will be set for Burkina Faso. Irrigation potentials and the impact of surface run-off will be
investigated. Measuring groundwater flows and levels will provide important information on
the issue of drinking water availability, too. Economic benefits from irrigation will be
analyzed, based on hydrological, agro-ecological, farm-household and farming
characteristics. Domestic water use will be investigated, and the impacts of agricultural and
domestic water use on health and peoples’ livelihoods will be analyzed. Results from the
first phase have shown that more effort should be devoted to gathering sufficient empirical
data that allow analyzing the formal and informal institutional settings and decision-making
processes at the local, national and international levels. A new approach is applied to the
analysis of institutions of natural resource management. In this way the potentials of and
constraints to introducing and implementing new policies can be appropriately analyzed.
The intersectoral water use optimization model, which was originally assigned to this
cluster, will be shifted to the new fourth cluster.
The cluster technical integration and decision support is host to the various efforts of data
integration and strategies relevant to science policy implementation within GLOWA Volta. It
supervises the technical integration of socio-economic and environmental modeling sub-
systems. This cluster relies heavily on the input from the other clusters in order to feed the
intersectoral water use optimization model. We will continue to integrate our “disciplinary”
sub-models within a multi-level multi-agent framework and further develop the technical
core of our integrated information system. The purpose of the Decision Support System
(DSS) is to provide knowledge to policy makers, public and private institutions as well as
individual stakeholders such as villagers and farm households. Capacity needs to be built
in order to warrant the effective management of the DSS in West Africa. In cooperation with
the Ghanaian Water Resources Commission (WRC) the experimental application of
scientific knowledge will be monitored and facilitated in the context of a policy pilot project
(White Volta Project). The policy pilot study will serve as a test of how our scientific
knowledge can actually be used together with one of our main “clients,” the WRC. It will
12
 INTRODUCTION

thus provide an opportunity of “learning-by-doing.” The challenge of communicating and

applying scientific knowledge will be met by building research-based capacity in close
collaboration with our research partners and thus initialize the policy dialogue at basin
level.

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 ATMOSPHERE

2. ATMOSPHERE

2.1 Introduction
Water availability, the basis for agriculture and food security, is directly linked to rainfall.
Especially in climate sensitive regions like West Africa and the Volta Basin, where rainfed
and irrigated agriculture is the main source of income, concerns about changes in rainfall
behavior (temporal and/or spatial distribution) due to global climate change or regional land
use change must be taken very seriously.
Against this background, the prime objectives of the “Atmosphere Cluster” are
• to estimate how water availability and precipitation in West Africa and the Volta
Basin change under different climate change and land use change scenarios,
• to quantify feedback mechanisms between vegetation, soil and precipitation,
• to provide scientifically sound tools within the overall Decision Support System
(DSS) that provide the water balance in the Volta Basin and insight into the onset of
the rainy season.
Due to the close link between atmospheric conditions, precipitation and surface/subsurface
water availability, the atmospheric cluster will be extended in the 2nd phase to cover
additionally selected hydrological topics.
Three sub-projects are required to answer the open research questions that came forward
as most important during the scientific and stakeholder workshops.
• Sub-project A 1 (continuation of 1st phase: Regional Climate Simulation and
Evapotranspiration Tagging) is the continuation of sub-projects that started in phase
1 and are not yet finished.
The sub-project is required to provide estimates on how precipitation behavior will
change in the Volta Basin due to global climate change and regional land use
change. Output of this sub-project covers statistical analysis of climate variability
and therefore changes in water availability, as it is needed in the Water Use Cluster.
Moreover, the sub-project deals with an innovative approach that allows
investigating in detail how land use affects precipitation behavior in remote areas. It
yields a tool that demonstrates how complex and far-reaching local and regional
land use change can be with respect to precipitation behavior.
• Sub-project A 2 Hydro-meteorological monitoring system. A coupled operational
meteorological and hydrological hindcasting system will be developed that
incorporates assimilation of satellite and scintillometry data. This system will be a
central building block within the mosaic of the overall DSS and enables continuous
monitoring of the water balance in the Volta Basin. The system focuses on basin-
wide quantification of energy fluxes through the combination of remote sensing and
scintillometry. It is important for the validation of model results and additionally tests
the applicability of the up-scaling methods developed in sub-project L4 “Scaling”.
• Sub-project A 3 Onset of the Rainy Season, deals with the big issue of judging the
first rains after the dry season. Are they already part of the rainy season, i.e. will
more precipitation follow the next days and weeks, or not? This question is of
crucial importance for all farmers in Ghana and Burkina Faso and therefore must be
solved in a way that allows its inclusion into the overall DSS. A continued shift in the
onset of the rainy season, as observed over the last decades, may be the single
most important climate change feature in the basin.

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 ATMOSPHERE

2.2 Sub-project A 1: Regional Climate Simulations and Evapotranspiration Tagging

2.2.1 Research Needs

This sub-project includes two major topics from phase I which have to be continued in
phase II:
• Regional Climate Simulations and
• Evapotranspiration Tagging.
A central issue in the project is the question how global climate change and regional land
use change in the long term influence the water balance in the Volta basin. We try to
answer this question through regional climate simulations which dynamically downscale
global climate scenarios as obtained from the ECHAM 4 GCM (Roeckner et al., 1999) from
2.8°x2.8° resolution down to final resolutions of 9x9 km2. The high horizontal resolution is
required to resolve local climate phenomena induced by land cover change and to account
for orographic and coastal effects. Time slices of 10 years duration of three scenarios are
downscaled: 1) recent climate under recent land use (ECHAM 4, 1990-1999,), 2) future
climate under recent land use (ECHAM 4, 2030-2039), and 3) future climate under
expected future land use (ECHAM 4, 2030-2039). The respective land use data are
obtained and compiled by the land use cluster. The pre-processors required to use ECHAM
4 simulated global scenarios in the meso-scale meteorological model MM5 were developed
and the climate simulations for case 1 and case 2 are currently running. Due to the high
CPU demand of the dynamical downscaling method, around 2 more years are required to
finish and analyze the regional climate simulations for West Africa and the Volta Basin.
In addition to what was proposed in phase I, we will couple the regional climate model to a
distributed hydrological model. This allows us to translate the projected changes in near
surface atmospheric variables (precipitation, temperature, humidity, wind, pressure) to
changes in surface and sub-surface water stocks as river and surface runoff, infiltration and
soil water, groundwater recharge or evapotranspiration. Here, the hydrological model is
expected to only reproduce monthly river runoff properly.
It is important to know how land use change influences precipitation in West Africa and the
Volta Basin due to soil-vegetation-precipitation feedback mechanisms. In the first phase,
feedback mechanisms were identified via atmospheric water balances and the estimation
of precipitation recycling ratios (Kunstmann et al., 2001). Direct as well as indirect soil-
moisture–precipitation feedbacks were detected. The estimated precipitation recycling
rates depend on the specific method applied. While the lumped approach according to
(Budyko, 1974), (Brubaker et al., 1993) and (Schär et al., 1999) led to smaller values than
the locally differentiating algorithm of (Eltahir & Bras, 1994), the “true” recycling rate can
only be estimated correctly by evapotranspiration tagging. Evapotranspiration tagging does
not assume a perfect horizontal and/or vertical mixing of evapotranspiration into the
atmosphere. It follows the “path” of water vapor (or “fraction” with respect to total water)
from a specified origin as evapotranspiration through advection, diffusion and phase
transitions until its “final” return to the surface as precipitation. Basic algorithms of
evapotranspiration tagging within MM5 were developed, but specific extensions to cover
convective precipitation have to be developed and included. Moreover, spatial and
temporal correlations must be identified, as these will enter directly into the scenario
database underlying the DSS.

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 ATMOSPHERE

In Sub-project A1, the following research questions will be answered:

• How does global climate change and regional land use change influence the water
balance in the Volta Basin in the long term?
• How does the changed atmospheric water balance affect the surface and
subsurface water balance?
• What do these results mean in terms of water availability and –security in the Volta
Basin?
• Where did precipitated water in the Volta Basin originally evaporate?
• Where does water that evaporates in the Volta Basin finally precipitate?
• What are spatial and temporal correlations between evaporating areas and
subsequent rainfall?

2.2.2 Objectives
With respect to regional climate simulation it has to be examined which changes in the
regional climate can be expected under the circumstances defined above. Shifts in spatial
and temporal rainfall patterns, amounts or intensities, as well as changes in temperature
distributions or extreme events (droughts) will have enormous effects on water availability
and human life in the Volta Basin. It has to be examined whether or not specific regions will
“benefit” or “loose” in terms of water availability in the next decades. In order to achieve
these objectives we propose the following:
Continuation and statistical analysis of the regional climate simulations for West
Africa and the Volta Basin
This objective is supposed to answer the following research questions:
• How accurate and realistic is the recent climate described by downscaled ECHAM
4 global climate scenarios?
How will regional climate, and especially temporal and spatial precipitation distribution,
change due to
• global climate change (as assumed in the driving ECHAM 4 scenario)?
• due to the proposed land use change (as proposed by the land use cluster)?
Coupled regional climate- hydrological modeling of the Volta Basin
This component aims at answering the following research questions:
• How accurate can the river runoff in the entire basin be calculated by a distributed
hydrological model under comparatively coarse resolution (3x3 km2), data scarcity
and uncertainty?
• How do regional climate model results translate into surface and subsurface water
balance changes?
• Can regions or districts be identified which are likely to run into significantly
decreased or increased water availability?
Concerning the Evapotranspiration Tagging, algorithms have to be formulated and
implemented in the meso-scale meteorological model, which allow to follow the “path” of
the water molecules through the atmosphere. This has to be achieved by numerically
stable algorithms, without decreasing computational efficiency of the code. The developed
method has to be applied to specific periods for which a detailed analysis on
evapotranspiration-precipitation-feedback-mechanisms will be performed.

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 ATMOSPHERE

Continuation and extension of the evapotranspiration algorithm in MM5

How can the fraction of water originating from a specific area properly be transported
trough the microphysics-, the planetary boundary-, and especially in the convective
parameterization scheme of MM5?
Spatial and temporal correlation analysis of evapotranspiration-precipitation-feedback-
mechanisms
This component aims at answering the following research questions:
• Is it possible to determine typical correlations between evapotranspiration in one
area and precipitation in other areas?
• What does this mean with regard to proposed land use change scenarios?

2.2.3 Methods
Regional climate simulations are performed using the method of dynamical downscaling.
The meso-scale meteorological model MM5 (Grell et al., 1994) is used for this task. In
phase I we developed numerous pre-processors to use ECHAM 4 global analysis data and
to automate the month-by-month simulations.
Distributed hydrological modeling of the Volta Basin is performed by the water balance
model WASIM-ETH (Schulla & Jasper, 1998). Respective interfaces, already developed in
phase I, allow driving WASIM directly with MM5 meteorological output. The coupling
between the two models is a one-way approach. The hydrological model will be calibrated
using met-stations and river runoff data over a specific 3-6 years period. Data are already
available for the Ghanaian part of the basin and have to be collected and compiled for the
Burkinabe part in the second phase.
Implementation of Evapotranspiration Tagging algorithms is continued in the meso-scale
meteorological model MM5. It is implemented by tagging the water originating from a
source region trough all physical processes and phase transitions of the entire water
amount, finally indicating the fraction of tagged water to total water.

2.2.4 Milestones
• Meteorological fields of 3x10 years dynamically downscaled ECHAM 4 scenarios
for West Africa and the Volta Basin.
• Assessment of performance and validation of regional climate model output for
recent climate through comparison to observed data.
• Statistical analysis of regional climate change with respect to near-surface
atmospheric variables.
• Calibrated distributed hydrological model for the Volta Basin.
• Results of coupled regional climate–hydrological model system.
• Statistical analysis of change of surface and subsurface water balance components
(river runoff, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, etc.) due to the three
different scenarios.
• Algorithm of evapotranspiration tagging numerically stable implemented in MM5.
• Evapotranspiration tagging applied to selected periods.
• Identification of spatial and temporal correlation, evapotranspiration-precipitation-
feedback mechanisms respectively.

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 ATMOSPHERE

2.3 Sub-project A 2: Hydro-Meteorological Monitoring System

2.3.1 Research Needs

The proposed Decision Support System (DSS) for the Volta Basin will, inter alia, consist of
a coupled operational meteorological and hydrological hindcasting system that includes
assimilated satellite and scintillometer data and allows basin wide estimation of water and
energy balances. We address this need by a two-fold approach:
• First, a coupled meteorological-hydrological model system will be developed. The
daily hindcasting of the meteorological situation in West Africa and the Volta Basin
(as installed in the 1st phase (see Kunstmann & Stadler, 2003)) must be extended
to cover subsequent hydrological water balance simulations. This will allow water
management authorities to monitor (in a coarse manner) the actual ongoing water
balance in the catchment through the entire year, thereby getting scientifically
sound information on river runoff, evapotranspiration, soil moisture content and -
distribution or groundwater recharge. Such a system does not yet exist in West
Africa and will be an innovative approach in hydrological science and could be
transferred to similarly observation-poor basins. To improve the quality of the land-
surface data input for both models, we investigate the possibilities of using satellite
derived land surface data within the coupled model system. Satellite derived data
are more realistic than the values of the standard data tables used in the
meteorological and the hydrological model. This task is linked to activities in Sub-
project L3 “Vegetation dynamics”.
• Second, an operational energy flux algorithm will be developed that is based on
remote sensing data (NOAA-AVHRR, MSG) with assimilated meteorological model
results and in-situ measurement, especially scintillometry. The rationale behind the
combination of these data sources is that it allows mapping of surface fluxes with
higher accuracy than each respective data source alone. Remote sensing data
give spatially detailed information on the relative distribution of energy fluxes.
Ground data have a high temporal resolution and have absolute values. The
coupled hydro-meteorological model evaluates the physical processes that link
ground and satellite observations. The feasibility of using a numerical weather
model instead of observed atmospheric data was recently shown by Jia, et al.
(2002). Typically, algorithms to obtain surface fluxes from remote sensing data
such as SEBAL (Bastiaansen, 1998) rely on assumptions with respect to fluxes in
extremely dry and wet locations. To remove these assumptions, in situ measured
surface fluxes will be used. The combination of three data sources is envisioned as
follows: remote sensing data are combined with MM5 and WaSim outputs to
provide surface flux estimates. These estimates are confronted with the in situ
measured sensible heat fluxes (and estimated latent heat fluxes), and
discrepancies will lead to an adjustment of the remote sensing algorithm, not only
at the location of the measurements, but on the scale of the entire image. The final
result will be an algorithm that provides constrained surface fluxes, based on
remotely sensed surface parameters and hydro-meteorological models.
The actual research questions can be summarized as follows:
• How accurate can the operationalized coupled meteorological-hydrological model
system reproduce observed river runoff?
• How can satellite derived land surface data improve the meteorological and
hydrological hindcasting?
• How can in-situ measurements of the scintillometer and operational hindcasting
data improve satellite derived heat flux estimates?

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 ATMOSPHERE

2.3.2 Objectives
While the meteorological model is already working in operationalized mode (established in
1st phase), it has to be coupled to the hydrological model. While the coupled regional
climate simulation (sub-project A 1) only requires the coupled model system to reproduce
monthly river runoff properly, here daily runoff values should be reproduced. In order to
achieve these objectives, we propose the following:
Operationalization of coupled meteorological-hydrological model system
This objective is supposed to answer the following research questions:
• How accurate can a meteorological-model-driven, hydrological model reproduce
observed river runoff in the Volta Basin?
• How reliable is the coupled system in terms of data availability (daily global
analysis; daily, WMO originating, upper-air and surface observation data)?
• What are the limits of the model system within the entire DSS?
Assimilation of satellite derived land surface parameters into the coupled model
system
This component aims at providing answers to the following research questions:
• How can satellite derived land surface parameters be efficiently passed into the
coupled model system (e.g. considering different coordinate systems, resolution,
etc.; methods of cubic convolution, nearest neighbor, etc)?
• What are the improvements in meteorological and hydrological model output due to
the assimilated data?
Validation and performance assessment of the coupled model system
Here, detailed validation must be performed. Validation includes comparison to
• observed meteorological station data,
• river runoff data,
• NOAA-AVHRR derived evapotranspiration fields using the SEBAL algorithm
(Bastiaanssen, 1998).
The proposed operational energy fluxes estimation by remote sensing algorithms leads to
the following objective:
Assimilation of in-situ measurements and meteorological model results into the
energy flux estimation through remote sensing algorithms
Here, we will adapt and extend existing algorithms for the surface energy balance
components based on the synergy of three data sources, notably:
• network of ground-based scintillometers (measuring sensible heat flux on MSG
pixel scale), combined with simple weather stations for auxiliary data;
• remote sensing data (ENVISAT, MSG and NOAA-AVHRR) providing directly or
indirectly surface temperature, albedo, cloud cover, net radiation components,
vegetation index;
• analysis or forecast fields from operational numerical weather forecast models (in
general any numerical weather model such as the operational ECMWF or NCP, but
within the research project MM5 and its daily hindcasting results), providing air
temperature, humidity, wind speed at a reference level at the lower end of the
atmospheric boundary layer;
The open research questions can be summarized as follows:
• How can ground based sensible heat flux measurements from scintillometers be
integrated into remote sensing algorithms to constrain the derived fluxes? Which
parameters or data in the remote sensing algorithm should be adapted based on a
possible discrepancy between the two fluxes?
• What is the optimal spatial scale (horizontally and vertically) of information from an
atmospheric model to be added to the remote sensing algorithm?

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 ATMOSPHERE

• What is the quality of temperature-, humidity- and wind profiles inside the boundary
layer? What is the impact of surface fluxes on these profiles, against the
background that the coupling of to the remote sensing algorithms is one-way?

2.3.3 Methods
The meteorological (MM5) and the hydrological model (WASIM) have a one-way coupling,
meaning the meteorology output is passed to the hydrological model via model interfaces
(already developed in 1st phase)1.
Land surface parameters will mainly be derived from NOAA-AVHRR images, whereas
ENVISAT (MERIS and AATSR sensors) will also be considered. Via specific
parameterizations based on NDVI or SAVI, and additional input information, the five NOAA
channels will provide estimates on land surface parameters such as albedo, emissivity,
roughness length, and vegetation fraction or leaf area index. Here, the program AHAS
(Advanced Hydrological System Analysis) will facilitate this task. At the moment, this
program is used to estimate heat fluxes from NOAA-AVHRR images (obtained from a
receiver station in Legon), which are provided by our Ghanaian partners. This task benefits
from experience and results gained in Sub-project L3 “Vegetation dynamics” where
additional sensors are applied in the deduction of land surface parameters.
Two scintillometers in Ghana will be kept operational in Ejura in the South and Tamale in
the center. The third scintillometer, that presently is located in Navrongo, will be relocated
to the vicinity of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to extend the moisture gradient into the
drier parts of the basin. The enhanced hydrological contrast between the three
experimental sites is needed to obtain information about surface fluxes at extreme
locations within one satellite image. Moreover, required regular radio sounding data are
available from Ouagadougou. As in the first phase, one intensive field observation period
will be performed at the new site. The deployment of eddy-covariance instrumentation, and
extra radiation and soil sensors will provide detailed information about the energy balance,
needed to improve the remote sensing algorithm. Eddy correlation data from the EU VinVal
project sites in the Ghanaian forest zone and eastern Burkina Faso will also be available.
The required remote sensing products (cloud mask, surface temperature, albedo and
vegetation characteristics) will be obtained from NOAAA-AVHRR and MSG data available
within the GLOWA Volta project. A choice (or combination) of algorithms needs to be made
in an early stage, based on their suitability of being combined with in situ fluxes and model
data. Options include SEBAL (Bastiaansen, et al., 1998), SEBS (Zu, 2002) and the first
order approach of Choudhury and de Bruin (1995). While MM5 hindcasting results are the
choice for the operational scheme, additional models are used to address specific research
concerns. The two-dimensional coupled boundary layer model CAPS (e.g. Holtslag and Ek,
1996) is used for example to determine the optimal vertical and horizontal resolution of the
atmospheric model data to be added to the remote sensing algorithm.
The quality of predicted boundary profiles and the feedback between boundary profiles and
surface fluxes will be determined with data from the intensive field campaign near
Ouagadougou. This will include validation with radio sounding data and assessment of
feedback mechanisms with the boundary layer model.
A new method to integrate the three data sources needs to be developed. Although
integration of remote sensing data and model data has been attempted already (Jia, et al.,
2002), the implementation is not trivial. The main task, however, will be to devise a
consistent and physically correct way of using in situ measured fluxes within the remote
sensing algorithm.

1
A description of the operationalization of the meteorological model can be found in the GLOWA
Volta year report 2001.
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 ATMOSPHERE

2.3.4 Milestones
• Coupled meteorological hydrological model system for the Volta Basin
• Reliability assessment for the performance of the model system
• Satellite derived data sets for specific land surface parameters, usable in MM5 and
WASIM (one set for each month, distinguishing three cases: wet year, dry year,
average year for past 5-10 years).
• Assessment of the value of satellite derived land surface parameters in
meteorological and hydrological modeling of the Volta Basin
• Relocation of Navrongo scintillometer to Ouagadougou.
• Intensive field campaigns are performed.
• Numerical weather model data combined with remote sensing algorithm are
determined.
• Method to combine the three data sources (scintillometer data, remote sensing data
and model data) is developed and validated.

2.4 Sub-project A 3: Onset of the Rainy Season

2.4.1 Research Needs

It became clear in phase I of GLOWA Volta that a topic of prime importance for sustainable
water management in the Volta Basin is the unresolved question of the determination of the
on-set of the rainy season. The farmers face a crucial dilemma with respect to the onset of
the rainy season: When the first rainfall events start after the dry season, the farmers must
decide whether or not they should start sowing. If they start sowing but no major rainfall
comes within the following 1-2 weeks, all of their effort is lost. If farmers do not sow, but the
first rains are already part of the rainy season (meaning more major rainfalls follow),
valuable time for agricultural production is lost.
The practical benefits of more accurate measures (or indicators) of the onset of the rainy
season therefore are enormous. More than any other research need, its successful solution
directly influences daily farmers’ life and action and therefore the food security in the Volta
Basin. A shift in the onset of the rainy season of around 3-4 weeks was observed over the
past 20 years. Our climate modeling should be able to reproduce this shift and make
predictions about possible further shifts. Research so far covers only very crude estimates
available, e.g. by comparing the u-component of the wind and upper levels by Prof.
Omotosho, University of Nigeria.
Building on the meteorological modeling experience obtained in the phase I, we address
the following research questions:
• What are the basic indicators for the onset of the rainy season (e.g. prevailing wind
directions, moisture gradients)?
• Can meso-scale meteorological modeling, especially operational hindcasting as
developed in phase I, provide detailed analysis for determining the onset of the
rainy season?
• Can satellite derived surface state variables (e.g. surface temperature or sea
surface temperature distribution) be correlated to the onset of the rainy season?
This sub-project will be performed in close cooperation with the Meteorological Service in
Ghana. Herewith the sub-project benefits from existing local knowledge and databases
while it builds capacity.

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 ATMOSPHERE

2.4.2 Objectives
The prime objective of this sub-project is to find any reliable indicator that can be applied by
the Meteorological Service in Ghana to decide whether or not the first rains after the dry
season are already the onset of the rainy season or not. To investigate possible indicators,
we propose the following two sub-objectives:

Statistical analysis of the onset of the rainy season

This component aims at answering the following research questions:
• Which correlations can be identified between remotely sensed surface state
variables (temperatures, NDVI, LAI, evapotranspiration patterns, moisture
indicators, etc.) and the onset of the rainy season?
• Which large-scale correlations can be identified (Easterly waves, Monsoon, SST,
NAO, ENSO)?
• How reliable are these correlations? What is the statistical significance?
High-resolution analysis of past onsets of the rainy season with MM5
The following research questions are covered here:
• Which meteorological characteristics can be identified from high-resolution
meteorological analysis that indicates the onset of the rainy season?
• Can these characteristics be observed in the ongoing operational hindcasts?
• What are the uncertainties related to identified indicators?
• How far can a meteorological forecast by MM5 help to judge the “recent” rains as
onset of the rainy season?

2.4.3 Methods
The meso-scale meteorological model MM5 will be used for detailed high-resolution
meteorological analysis. The respective periods around the onset time of the last 10 to 20
years will be examined this way. Comparison to observed station data and statistical
analysis of both station and analysis results will be applied to extract potential indicators for
the onset of the rainy season. Statistical analysis will be performed using Singular Value
Decomposition (SVD) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA).
Additionally, satellite images will be analyzed for the same periods and evaluated with
respect to surface temperatures, NDVI, LAI, vegetation fraction, distribution of moisture
indicators, etc. Again, statistical analysis will be applied to identify potential indicators for
the onset of the rainy season. First choice for satellite images are NOAA-AVHRR images,
since they fit the required temporal and spatial resolution and are regularly provided by our
Ghanaian partner institution in Legon. The AHAS (Advanced Hydrological Analysis
System), which has already been successfully used in the determination of heat fluxes by
NOAA-AVHRR interpretation, will be applied for the satellite image processing.

2.4.4 Milestones
• Results of 10-20 years meteorological hindcast with MM5.
• Statistical analysis of the results.
• Understanding the physical “requirements” for the onset of the rainy season.
• Identification of suited indicator variables.
• Results of 5-10 years NOAA-AVHRR images interpretations.
• Identification of potential indicator variables
• Assessment of uncertainty and reliability of identified indicators.

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 ATMOSPHERE

2.5 Comment concerning financing

One scientist ( H. Kunstmann) and one Ph.D. student (G. Jung) will be fully financed within
IMK-IFU core funds (FZK) to work on sub-project A 1. The personal costs of these two
equal approximately the personal costs IMK-IFU requested from BMBF in the 1st phase
(which was around 18 full person months/year). In the 2nd phase, only for two new Ph.D.
students funds are requested from BMBF (from 2004 on, sub-projects A2 and A 3) by IMK-
IFU. The two new Ph.D. students are required to cover topics of the operational, coupled
meteorological-hydrological system for the Volta Basin and the estimation of the onset of
the rainy season. These two points were judged to be of extreme importance within the
overall DSS, as was revealed at the stakeholder meetings in Accra and Ouagadougou in
July 2002.

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3. LAND USE

3.1 Introduction
Land surface conditions directly determine the energy and water balances at a given
position, which in turn influence the meteorological and hydrological cycles. Consequently,
realistic regional climate and hydrological water balance simulations require detailed
information on vegetation, soil, and different land use types as their input parameters. At
the same time, the changes of climatic and hydrological conditions influence vegetation
characteristics, soil properties, and more importantly, land use related socio-economic
activities.
The land use cluster aims
• to understand interactions between the social and natural environment in order to
model land use change within the Volta basin;
• to provide the soil- and vegetation-related input parameters and their dynamics for
meteorological and hydrological models.
The reciprocal relations between land surface and socio-economic activities for a given
climate, will be simulated by an integrated dynamic model. The prototype of the simulation
model was developed during the first phase of the project. The unique characteristic of this
model is that it combines landscape-scale processes with agent-based systems to assess
spatially distributed human-nature interactions. Five sub-projects are designed to
understand various aspects of land use change related processes within the Volta basin.
All these sub-projects will contribute to build an integrative land use change prediction
model.
Modeling soil and vegetation related input variables often require intensive, long-term field
experiments. The close scale linkage between basin-wide models and research findings in
the experimental catchments is one of main methodological challenges for this cluster.
During phase I, continuous multidisciplinary discussions created a new methodological
framework that ensures a maximum of overlap not only between socio-economic and bio-
physical fieldwork, but also between different observation scales of individual sub-projects
(Figure 1). The overall methodological framework comprises three research activities: a
‘common sampling frame’, intensive field experiments, and cross-scale linkages. The
‘common sampling frame’ was developed to increase reliability of socio-economic
surveying with respect to the physical environment and to allow generalization of the
findings to the national and basin level. Detailed field experiments on soil and hydrological
processes were carried out mainly in three experimental sites in Ghana. In order to ensure
linkage between basin-wide investigations and detailed experiments in the catchments,
several ‘cross-linkage’ research activities were also implemented. These include the
establishment of a ‘basin-wide soil data base’, standard land use classification, and
development of algorithms to investigate the spatial dependency between spatial data sets.
Remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) proved very efficient tools to
bridge these two different spatial scales of field investigations.

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Common sampling frame Field experimental sites

Crosscale
- Primarily basin -wide
linkages - Primarily model
socio -economic studies
„Hotspots“
“Hotspots” development and
W2 (L2 and L3) - Area where accererated parameterisation
socio-economic and natural (L4 and L5) A2
- Community
community and
and processes occurs;
occur;
household survey - “hotspots”
„hotspots“ exemplify the - Long -term
dominant processes within the measurement or
W3 -Spatial scale : basin
basin- intensive field studies
basin (debatable?);
wide - intensive interdescriplinary
efforts or a case study - Spatial scale :
A3
-Selection based by a catchments or hillslopes
W4 stratification of exisitng
socio -economic and -Selected by criteria
ecological data Basin wide soil data reflecting representative
base construction landscape elements W2
- Spatial disaggregation within the basin
W5 may be the main
challenge - Spatial extrapolation is
GLOWA land cover the main challenge
directory

Spatial analysis and database management

(RS and GIS) for all subprojects

Figure 1: The methodological framework to explain the cross-scale linkage between basin-
wide investigations and detailed calibration studies at the experimental catchment. Please
note: the sub-project notation follows the phase I of the GLOWA Volta.

For the second phase of the project, we are now proposing five sub-projects that logistically
support the development of the land use change simulation model and parameterization.
Most of these sub-projects are a clear continuation of our research activities from the first
phase, but we identified several research components that should be strengthened in order
to achieve the goal of the project. The following are summaries for each individual sub-
project:
• Sub-project L1: Land use change detection and quantification.
This sub-project combines two previous sub-projects, ‘land use and natural resources’
and ‘land use change and socio-economic development’. Various algorithms to detect
land use change have been developed and tested to map the land use distribution
between 1991 and 2000 over the whole of Ghana. At the same time, socio-economic
development and land use change patterns have been studied at several localities
within the Volta basin. While similar research activities are still required for Burkina
Faso, the main focus will be shifted to combine socio-economic driving forces and
natural constraint factors to characterize the land use changes within the basin (see L5
below).
• Sub-project L2: Soil characterization
This project builds on the sub-project ‘soil characterization’. Considering the
importance of soils as input parameters for meteorological, hydrological and land use
change models, appropriate understanding of complex spatial distribution of soils and
their responses for various environmental impacts are vital elements for the success of
the project. During the first phase, a holistic landscape-based model was developed to
predict the spatial distribution of soils on the basis of their position in the landscape.
Further refinement of this model and application to the whole basin will be carried out
using an advanced scientific information system and knowledge engineering
techniques (see also D1).

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• Sub-project L3: Vegetation Dynamics

This sub-project is the continuation of sub-project ‘vegetation characterization’ and
presents two important service functions to the project: vegetation input parameters for
MM5-SVAT model and the estimation of biomass and agricultural production. In order
to provide this information, the sub-project has to meet the scientific challenge of
solving the complex issues related to the spatial dynamics of vegetation. Compared to
phase I, much stronger emphasis will be put upon understanding the dynamics of
vegetation and crop growth responses over the seasons and possible scenarios of
socio-economic and natural environmental changes.
• Sub-project L4: Modeling and spatial and temporal upscaling of erosion and
hydrological processes
The GLOWA Volta project models hydrological responses for the full 400,000 km² basin
with a coarse spatial resolution. At the same time, detailed investigations on
hydrological processes are needed to identify and verify key hydrological model
components. Three representative catchments have been selected within Ghana to
monitor hydrological responses under different environmental and land use conditions.
Through the EU VinVal Project, very similar data are presently collected in Eastern
Burkina Faso. One additional experimental site will be selected near Ouagadougou at
the early stage of phase II. During the first phase it was recognized that the difference
in spatial scale between acquired land surface information and the spatial resolution of
hydrological models is a potential bottleneck and necessary field measurements,
especially scintillometry, were made. In this sub-project, such spatial and temporal
scaling issues will be addressed utilizing both statistical and process-based
approaches.
• Sub-project L5: Land use change prediction model (LUCC modeling)
The main objective of this sub-project is to construct a computer simulation platform to
estimate the influence of different climate and policy scenarios on the land cover
changes within the Volta basin. A prototype, spatially explicit, dynamic simulation
model: GV-LUDAS (GLOWA Volta Land use Dynamic Simulator), has been developed
during the first phase. GV-LUDAS combines spatially distributed landscape-scale
processes and an agent-based model to capture the complexity of human-nature
interactions. The current GV-LUDAS is utilizing abstract functional relationships for
both natural processes and socio-economic decision-making processes. The
construction of a working model will be undertaken in the second phase of the project.
The modeling effort will be placed at the center of the land use cluster and is to be fed
by research findings from other sub-projects.

3.2 Sub-project L1: Land use change detection and quantification

3.2.1 Research Needs

In the first phase, mapping activities focused on using remote sensing for land use and
land cover at two time slices (1991 and 2000) and covering the Volta basin in Ghana. For
this purpose, a suitable classification system based on structural vegetation parameters
has been developed. The scheme is consistent with Ghanaian and international
classification schemes. At three test sites, the methods were used for detection and
quantification of land cover change. At the same time, socio-economic development and
land use change patterns were studied at several localities within the Volta basin.
Continuation of this activity will involve two main research activities. The first is to
characterize land use changes by extending the existing data pool in two directions: (a)
geographically to include the whole Volta basin, especially Burkina Faso; and (b)
temporally to cover a period about 20 years. A spectral and textural library for important
land cover types of the basin will be compiled, in order to facilitate automated generation of
land use maps. The second research focus is to identify correlations between key factors
and indicators with the identified land use change patterns. Factors to be considered will be

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biophysical and socio-economic in nature, and will partially be provided by other sub-
projects (e.g. D2 and W2). The impact of human activities (e.g. due to fires, agriculture,
dams, roads or settlements) on vegetation and soil parameters will be identified and
studied in depth, for example in a large scale clearing or reforestation program.
During the first phase of the project, a large quantity of spatial information was generated
from different sub-projects. This information included detailed GIS layers, continuous
NOAA images, multi-temporal and multi-spectral RS images, land use maps for different
time periods, soil maps, digital elevation models, and the initial simulation results from
MM5. As the study area will be further extended to Burkina Faso in phase II, the efficient
management of spatial information becomes even more important. We will therefore
centralize our GIS data base management and analyze the GIS layers in order to handle
scaling problems. A system manager with a master degree in GIS or spatial information
management will continue to run the system.

3.2.2 Objectives
The objectives of this sub-project are 1) to extend the existing land use classification
scheme and methodologies to the remaining parts of the Volta basin, and 2) to build a
comprehensive database including all data (RS, socio-economic surveys, experimental
watersheds), and 3) use the database to identify spatial correlations between identified
land use change and socio-economic and natural factors.
The specific research questions include:
• Can the classification methods, which have been developed for Ghana, be
transferred to the whole basin or are modifications needed?
• Can we adapt the classification scheme to other sensors with different spectral or
spatial characteristics, which will be necessary for the mapping of the situation
during the last 20 years?
• Can we develop automatic and robust algorithms for change detection?
• What are the functional or empirical relations between land use change and
explanatory variables?
• What is the optimal spatial and temporal scale for the detection and characterization
of different types of land use changes?

3.2.3 Methods
Land use and land cover change maps will be generated by means of satellite images
covering the complete Volta basin at various spatial and temporal resolutions. Starting from
the existing algorithm of land cover classification, new algorithms for the automatic
extraction of vegetation parameters have to be developed, which take into account the
geographical and temporal extensions of the mapping and new sensors capabilities. Know-
ledge-based classifiers and the application of spectral databases will be investigated for
this purpose. In close cooperation with INERA (BF) the extension of the maps will be
verified by ground-truth data.
The driving forces of land-cover change will be identified and characterized in detail by
applying methods like multivariate regression modeling. To facilitate change analysis, first,
effects of socio-economic and natural ecosystem change will be investigated separately. In
a subsequent step, established rules will be revisited and tested for their robustness. The
established rules from the derived relationships will first be applied as hindcasting to
assess and to test the model for land use and land cover change at the test sites and for
the whole basin. These results will be compared with the results of the land cover analysis
and then used to validate and enhance model performance.

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 LAND USE

3.2.4 Milestones
• Pre-processing of remote sensing data; acquisition, geo-referencing, radiometric
correction for atmospheric effects and calibration to represent geophysical units.
• Compilation of a spectral library for several land cover and vegetation types
completed;
• Project-wide database established encompassing all geo-referenced data
• Land cover maps for the whole basin and for the additional time slices;
• Change detection maps generated, including characterization of quality and
quantity of changes, change matrices, change vectors;
• Functional dependencies and rules for main changes are established;
• Model improvement and adaptation by hind casting.

3.3 Sub-project L2: Soil characterization

3.3.1 Research Needs

The regional climate and hydrology models require detailed soil physical parameters
covering the whole basin. Furthermore, soil quality distribution strongly influences the
spatial distribution of land use change. Though Ghana has a level 2 FAO soil map in a
digital format, detailed individual parameters, especially hydrological properties of soils, are
not available for the whole basin. Acquiring these parameters by separate field
measurements is costly and time consuming.
During the first phase, a soil-landscape based method was developed for the
characterization of soil parameters over the basin. This method has been tested in two
research sites in Ghana: Nyankpala (Tamale) and Ejura. Within the ‘common sampling
frame’, soil samples were taken from farms included in the socio-economic survey and
during field campaigning of the remote sensing research group. Thus, we currently have
more than 2000 soil samples that were geo-referenced, and many of them registered with
socio-economic survey data. This database will be the basis for basin-wide soil
parameterization.

3.3.2 Objectives
The main objective of this sub-project is to build a basin-wide soil database using advanced
spatial information systems. This sub-project has a strong service function but also
addresses unique scientific challenges to solve the complex issues related to the spatial
distribution of soils.
Specific research questions are:
• Is there any spatial dependency of individual soil parameters on different
environmental factors (terrain, vegetation, and parent materials)?
• How can hydraulic soil properties be derived from basic soil attributes, such as soil
texture and organic matter content?
• What is the best strategy to extrapolate such pedotransfer functions over the whole
basin?

3.3.3 Methods
Regardless of the complexity of the model structure, the spatial heterogeneity of soils and
the lack of appropriate input parameters are one of the main sources for the uncertainty of
model outputs (Beven, 1995). There are several approaches to handle this problem. The
first is a fully distributed representation of surface and soil conditions. This approach
requires enormous field effort to identify such parameters, under conditions found in
developing countries. The second approach is lumped land-surface presentation. As a
consequence of the spatial averaging, however, the physical soundness of the process
description is often lost. The third alternative, chosen in GLOWA Volta, is to delineate the

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landscape into homogeneous landscape units where similar hydrological, geomorphologic,

and biological processes occur. This approach has the potential to reduce time and cost for
intensive sampling, while at the same taking the underlying physical processes into
account.
So far, the project developed a model based on the catena concept that is widely
applicable under African conditions (Conacher and Dalrymple, 1977). Based on the
continuity equation, a delineation procedure of the landscape catena was developed and
implemented into a terrain analysis algorithm (Park et al., 2001). This algorithm has been
tested in two research sites, Nyankpala (Tamale) and Ejura, and yields promising results.
Due to theoretical and mathematical similarities with many existing hydrological surface-
routing algorithms, this approach will further ensure the connection with hydrological,
erosion and crop simulation modeling efforts.
The delineation procedure is based on topography, which is only one of the many
interacting environmental factors of soil formation. In order to combine the influence of
other natural environmental factors into the catena-based soil mapping, two different
modeling approaches will be followed. The first is a soil expert system and the second is
based on environmental correlations. EXPECTOR (Cook et al., 1996) and SoLim (Zhu et
al., 2001) are expert systems that iteratively assess the probability of the occurrence of
certain soil types over the landscape utilizing Bayes’ theorem. When local expertise does
not exist, various environmental correlation approaches (generalized linear model,
regression tree, and artificial neural networks) may be used to establish functional
relationships between specific soil properties and various environmental factors generated
from GIS and RS images (Park and Vlek, 2002). The soil data collected in phase I and to
be collected in Burkina Faso in phase II will be used as training data set, and the functional
relationship established will be extrapolated towards the whole basin by means of Kriging
with regression (McBrateny et al., 2000).
Some soil parameters, such as saturated hydraulic conductivity, wilting point, etc., will be
estimated by using pedotransfer functions derived from basic soil attributes (e.g. soil
organic matter content, parent materials, and soil textural classes). Soil parameters derived
from the pedotransfer functions are those that are difficult and expensive to measure.
During the first phase, we observed that the prediction accuracy (R2) of saturated hydraulic
conductivity from basic soil attributes reached 0.69 when we applied a neural network
approach for soil data at the Nyankpala site. This is sufficiently high to estimate soil
hydraulic parameters for the regional scale hydrological and climatic models.

3.3.4 Milestones
• Tested and verified soil-landscape model to predict basic soil properties at the
experimental sites;
• Soil expert system to upgrade existing soil maps;
• Establishment of functional relationships between the spatial distribution of soil
properties and other GIS based environmental variables;
• Pedotransfer functions to estimate the key SVAT model parameters;
• Extrapolation of the environmental correlation functions toward the whole basin.

3.4 Sub-project L3: Vegetation Dynamics

3.4.1 Research Needs

This sub-project has two important service functions in the project. First, it provides the
MM5-SVAT model with vegetation parameters, and secondly, it provides the biophysical
basis for estimating biomass and agricultural production. In phase I, the sub-project
‘vegetation characterization’ focused on the development of statistical algorithms to
characterize the spatial dependency of vegetation, the calibration of a crop simulation

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model for tropical conditions, and the investigation of the influence of bush fires on
regeneration and vegetation structure.
Parameters that characterize the seasonal phenological development of vegetation are
important input data for the MM5-SVAT modeling. Remote sensing data with moderate
spatial and high temporal resolution can provide this kind of information for large areas.
The GLOWA Volta project has access to NOAA-AVHRR images from the L-Band receiving
station in Legon, Ghana. Some vegetation parameters derived from NOAA-AVHRR images
have been successfully incorporated in the MM5-SVAT model (see Atmosphere cluster).
However, the estimation of additional vegetation parameters (e.g. emissivity, roughness
length, rooting depth or leaf area index) requires field investigations and research into the
capacities of new remotely sensed information (e.g. Terra MODIS, Spot Vegetation). To
derive additional information on phyto-structural information like rooting depth, possible
correlations between this and other structural vegetation parameters have to be
investigated. During the first phase, field investigations for vegetation parameters have
been conducted during the RS ground truth and bush fire studies. These data will serve as
input and cross check to develop algorithms, capable of extracting information crucial to
such modeling from remotely sensed imagery. More systematic field studies are planned
during the second phase in collaboration with crop growth modeling studies at different
agro-ecological zones. Close cooperation with BIOTA W2 is foreseen.
The needs of crop growth models have become increasingly important during the first
phase. Yield response functions to the given technological inputs are an essential tool to
understand and mimic farmer decision-making and to predict the need for additional arable
land in the future (see sub-project D2). The exhaustion of soil nutrients in compound farms
and the lack of available technological options force farmers to increase the size of bush
farms and even decide to abandon their original compound farms and to advance into
natural forests. Such migrations convert large natural areas into agricultural land in a short
time. From the perspective of a DSS, this sub-project helps to develop possible policy
scenarios and technological intervention to minimize detrimental land cover conversion
within the basin.
During the first phase, an empirical crop simulation model was developed utilizing artificial
neural networks (ANN). The ANN crop simulator gives us the flexibility to incorporate wide
ranges of technological options and the spatial variability of soil and climatic conditions.
However, the performance of the ANN crop simulation model is heavily dependent on the
availability of empirical data, which requires systematic surveys of farms. Once fully
developed, this type of crop simulation model will serve as bio-economic modeling
framework in the DSS for the yield-response input requirements, which will help to forecast
land use change and farmers' decision making processes (sub-projects L5 and D2).

3.4.2 Objectives
The main objective of this sub-project is to characterize seasonal phenological changes of
crop and vegetation cover from imagery of various remote sensing sensors aided by input
from field investigations and model outputs. More specific objectives and research
questions are:
• Which parameters at which temporal and spatial resolution are most appropriate for
the characterization of phenological changes of vegetation?
• Which algorithms allow extraction of these parameters from remote sensing data?
• What is the dependency of crop yield on landscape position agro-ecological zone?
• What are the quantitative and qualitative impacts of bush burning and the
introduction of irrigation on crop yield in a savanna landscape?

3.4.3 Methods
Remote sensing data with moderate spatial and high temporal resolution will be used to
provide information on vegetation structural parameters over large areas. There is already
a database of some vegetation parameters derived from previously compiled NOAA-
AVHRR imagery archives (see Atmospheric cluster). A detailed analysis of the
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phenological changes in the Volta basin based on this database plus information derived
from other sensors will be performed to characterize the seasonality of crop/vegetation
cover. Via specific parameterizations (based on products such as NDVI, SAVI, etc.) and
additional input provided from other sensors, estimates on land surface parameters such
as albedo, emissivity, surface roughness length, vegetation fraction or leaf area index will
be provided. Combined with mechanically modeled crop/vegetation dynamics, a number of
parameters will be derived. Possible modifications of the parameters (resolution, format,
etc) have to be applied and the data processing and transfer chain need to be established.
Moreover, since MM5 is applied in three hierarchically nested spatial domains, it is
necessary to provide additional land use information with low resolution for a larger area
than the Volta basin. It is envisaged to provide this information for the second domain of
MM5 covering a large part of West Africa.
Like for the sub-projects L2 and L4, detailed field investigations for model parameterization
and calibration will be carried out at the three experimental sites in Ghana and two
research sites in Burkina Faso. Characterization of vegetation/crop dynamics will benefit
from the results of soil characterization and erosion-hydrological model sub-projects. Based
on soil distribution and prior GIS analysis, experimental sites will be divided into several
relatively homogeneous units. Tentatively, we expect about five or six different
management response units (MRUs) within each catchment. Under collaborative
arrangements with research partners, SRI and INERA, farm trials will be carried out during
the first two years of the second phase. In addition to monitoring vegetation cover changes
over the season, three main land management options will be included: 1) different
inorganic fertilizer inputs, 2) bush fires and soil organic matter management, and 3)
introduction of irrigation. Certain land management options will be applied to different
landscape units (e.g. irrigation scheme for the lower slope position). These trials will
provide input parameters for different modeling approaches.

3.4.4 Milestones
• Algorithms for the derivation of vegetation parameters;
• Models for seasonal vegetation/crop changes adjusted and operationalized;
• Parameters of seasonal phenological changes at medium to low spatial
resolutions (500m –1000m) are produced;
• Assimilation of vegetation parameters in the meteorological model;
• Data processing and transfer chain from the remote sensing data to the model
input is established;
• Site- and management-sensitive crop models are developed and calibrated
through field trials and tested for extrapolation capacity;

3.5 Sub-project L4: Modeling spatial and temporal upscaling of erosion and
hydrological processes

3.5.1 Research Needs

Any effort to capture the effect of global change on the water balance and cycle will need to
account for changes in the capacity of the soil to continue to play its role as a water
reservoir or conduit, and as a substrate to hold and support plant growth. Land use
intensification or major changes in land cover may have dramatic consequences regarding
this ability of the soil. With water being at the core of the project, the focus is on the effects
on the redistribution of rainfall at the earth surface. These complex processes and possible
interactions with land use activities can best be captured by spatially distributed erosion
and hydrological modeling approaches.
During the fist phase all necessary equipment, including weirs, automatic meteorological
stations, scintillometers, and surface runoff plots, were installed and measurement started
from April, 2001. Erosion plots were installed in three different ecological zones, showing
that different land use systems have a strong influence on the amount of surface runoff and

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surface soil erosion. Isotope studies (Cs-137 and Pb-210) were used at the Ejura site to
quantify the long-term erosion rate under different environmental and land use conditions.
The level of Cs-137 is low (2-3Bq/kg with 10% measurement error) but high enough to
utilize this technique for the validation of surface runoff and erosion processes. Finally, the
feasibility of several erosion and hydrological models, including WaSiM, EROSION-3D, and
RUSLE were compared and tested. In the second phase, all these models need to be
coupled to assess partitioning of water at the surface and quantify erosion-depositional
processes under different ecological conditions.
Field investigations to characterize detailed hydrological, pedological and biological
processes will continue to be carried out at the three experimental sites in Ghana, at the
VinVal site in Kompienga, and one additional site near Ouagadougou. We expect GIS and
RS to play important roles in combining all this information in an effective and sound
manner.
The spatial distribution of runoff depends on catchment topography, soil and vegetation
patterns. Adequately accounting for such spatial heterogeneity within a catchment has long
been considered a pre-requisite for improved regional scale water and energy flux
predictions (Wood et al., 1988; Beven, 1995, Wooldrige and Kalma, 2001). Both climatic
and hydrological models in GLOWA Volta run on a coarse spatial resolution (approximately
9 × 9 km ground resolution) due to high demands for computing power. Existing RS and
GIS information is available at much smaller spatial scales. With the data, ideas and partial
models from the first phase, we will build one systematic approach to utilize readily
available detailed geo-information to higher scales.

3.5.2 Objectives
The main objective of this sub-project is to understand and model water redistribution
processes in different ecological zones and their impact on erosion-depositional processes
of soil materials. The goal is further to investigate available upscaling procedures to
facilitate the cross-scale linkage of findings between field scale and the coarse 9x9 km
scale.
Specific research questions include:
• Which erosion and hydrological process models are most appropriate in the
different zones of the basin, especially when we consider the final large-scale
output? ;
• How does spatial variability of soil and vegetation affect the water balance?;
• What is the most adequate algorithm to upscale fine-resolution outputs into a
database with a coarse resolution?

3.5.3 Methods
Model selection and justification
The Water balance Simulation Model (WaSiM-ETH, Shulla, 1997) is the hydrological model
of choice to simulate the hydrology of both the experimental catchments and the whole
basin (see Atmosphere Cluster for more details). WaSiM-ETH is a spatially distributed
hydrological model that can simulate two distinct hydrological runoff processes: saturation
excess through variable source area hydrology (TOPMODEL, Beven and Kirkby, 1979) and
infiltration capacity excess on the basis of Richards’s equation with multiple soil layers.
Considering the scarcity of actual field measurements for the whole Volta basin and the
need for extrapolation outside the experimental watersheds, a landscape-based
hydrological model such as TOPMODEL is favored. However, the TOPMODEL approach
generally does not capture physical processes that are known to be important in semi-arid
landscapes (Masiyandima et al, 2002; van de Giesen et al 2000). Parsimonious use of
Richard’s equation in WaSiM-ETH will greatly increase the flexibility to cover all relevant
processes.
WaSiM does not include erosion-sedimentation processes. In order to facilitate
communication between hydrological and erosion models, EROSION-3D is selected.

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EROSION 3-D is a physically based soil erosion model including terrain shape, soil
characteristics, and land use activities. The strong emphasis on spatial connectivity of
hydrological routing processes in this model is shared with WaSiM-ETH.
Model calibration and validation
Detailed studies at three existing in Ghana and two sites in Burkina Faso, will allow us to
extrapolate the major findings to other areas within the basin. Processes incorporated in
the model are rainfall, surface storage, infiltration, vertical movement of water through the
soil, overland flow, channel flow, detachment by rainfall, detachment by overland flow, and
transport capacity of channel flow. In the first phase of the project, we found that surface
sealing is extremely important in generating surface runoff and subsequent erosion
processes. Using erosion plots, rain gauges, weirs, and automatic weather stations will
continuously monitor all those factors.
The influence of surface cover and different land use on the hydrological balance will be
carried out in collaboration with Vegetation Dynamics (Sub-project L3) and BIOTA W2. Soil
parameterization has been started in phase I and will continue into the first part of the next
phase of the project. It has become clear that there are distinct catenary sequences of soil
properties along the hillslope and major flow lines. These findings allow us to more easily
incorporate soil and topographical factors in both hydrological and erosion modeling efforts.
We hypothesize that there is a spatial domain over the catchment, referred to as
hydrological response units (HRU), in which the dominant geomorphologic, hydrological,
biological, and pedological processes are similar. The inclusion of such a HRU concept will
greatly reduce the time and cost of model input parameterization and also increase the
accuracy of model outputs for uncalibrated catchments (Flügel, 1995; Wooldridge and
Kalma, 2001).
The calibrated models will be validated by continuous hydrological monitoring using weirs
and surface runoff plots. Using Cs-137 techniques will assess the long-term spatial
distribution of erosion and soil degradation.
Upscaling of model outputs
Basin-wide hydrological modeling will be conducted in the Atmosphere Cluster. The
present sub-project will investigate the cross-scale linkage between detailed hydrological
processes calibrated at the experimental catchments to the hydrological responses at the
larger grid resolution. After model calibration and validation, the influence of different
spatial resolution on the hydrological responses will be investigated by means of changing
the grid size of input parameters. This builds upon work that will be continued into the
second by Mr. Joseph Intsiful who successfully used dynamic modeling to find upscaling
algorithms for different vegetation parameters.
Spatially distributed modeling allows us to investigate the dependency of hydrological
responses on various environmental factors (digital elevation model, NDVI generated from
RS data, etc.). When sufficient spatial correlations between actual field data and various
basin-wide available GIS data can be established, they also can be extrapolated into areas
that were not surveyed. This procedure requires close collaboration arrangement with the
data-base management group (Technical Integration and Decision Support Cluster).
Upscaling algorithms have to capture the important details of the fine scale model. This
means that relatively homogeneous areas can be easily scaled up while areas with large
heterogeneity may scale up to a lesser extent to preserve the underlying dynamics (Jansen
and Kelkar, 1998). Wavelet analysis is a branch of mathematics developed mainly in signal
and image processing. The wavelet transform provides a space-time decomposition, which
allows for the gradual smoothing of a set of data by removing high frequency features. In
recent years, its application scaling issues have received major attention in environmental
science (Foufoula-Georgiou and Kumar, 1994). Wavelet transformations preserve the local
details during the upscaling, and downscaling (spatial disaggregation) can be easily
achieved by restoring the local variance stored separately. Such bi-directional scaling
properties may provide a useful tool to study the fundamental and structural characteristics
of multi-scale spatial data. We expect that the application of wavelets will give a clear

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insight into the overall structure of spatial data, their spatial characteristics, optimal
representation of the spatial data for various research questions from other sub-projects.
In addition to the comparison of various scaling method and the development of our own
scaling algorithm, further attempts will be made to investigate covariance structures that
might exist among different GIS and RS information layers. Understanding the covariance
structure and its scale dependency may greatly reduce time and efforts to collect separate
spatial information to satisfy the demands for input parameters from many different sub-
projects. One technological innovation during the first phase was the development of a
multi-scale adaptive model (MAM) to find spatial correlation between dependent variables
(vegetation intensity and land use change patterns) and independent variables
(topography, market accessibility, water availability, etc) at various spatial scales (Park et
al., 2002). This technique utilizes a moving window with variable size and grid resolution,
within which various independent variables are regressed against dependant variables.
Further application of this technique will provide better understanding on scale dependency
of various geographical properties, especially in combination with wavelet analysis.
In order to validate the upscaling procedures, development of the project-wide soil
database will be continued. We plan to carry out this activity in collaboration with Soil
Research Institute (SRI), the national soil-mapping agency in Ghana. SRI recently initiated
a new effort to build a nation-wide soil database, in the form of a “bench mark soil data
base”. This effort will be combined with our project-wide soil database and will ensure
uniform procedures for soil parameterization for the whole basin and also facilitate bi-
national collaboration and exchange of scientific knowledge as we expand into Burkina
Faso.

3.5.4 Milestones
• Model calibration and validation for different soils, land use, vegetation and climatic
parameters (1st year);
• Sensitivity analysis of input parameters to identify the important parameters in the
hydrological responses at different ecological conditions (2nd year);
• Upscaling algorithms for all major input parameters (3rd year);
• Identification of correlations between model outputs and other GIS information for
upscaling to the whole basin (3rd year).

3.6 Sub-project L5: Land use-change prediction model (LUCC modeling)

3.6.1 Research Needs

Land use and cover change (LUCC) is a result of complex and dynamic interactions
between socio-economic conditions, natural environments and cultural-historical heritages
of individuals and communities. The quality and availability of land are highly variable in
both time and space. Furthermore, individuals’ land use decision making also varies widely
depending on population pressure, market opportunities, infrastructure, the existence of
institutions, and environmental or resource policies. Possible climatic changes and the
uncertainty of water availability in the future will directly influence the socio-economic
activities within the basin, and direct future land use patterns. At the same time, the
changes of land cover will influence the energy and hydrological balance on the regional
scale.
The basin-wide ‘hotspot’ mapping and detailed socio-economic studies conducted during
the first phase show that there are two distinct forms of land use changes: the first is
diffusive land cover conversion at or near existing human settlements, and the second is
rapid alterations of land cover from natural vegetated areas to agricultural lands-
settlements (‘hotspots’) (Clottery and Kombiok. 2000). Such rapid alterations were caused
by the rise of new environmental and economic opportunities, such as building of a new
road or the eradication of river blindness. The latter caused the encroachment of

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agricultural lands onto riparian zones, and new irrigation schemes. Farmers recognized the
spatial difference of soil quality over the landscape. Therefore, farmers in search for new
farmlands systematically use such landscape-based knowledge when they abandon their
compound and bush farms.
A prototype, spatially explicit, dynamic simulation model: GV-LUDAS (GLOWA Volta Land
use Dynamic Simulator), has been developed during the first phase that captures the two
different land-conversion processes. The uniqueness of GV-LUDAS is that it combines the
spatially distributed landscape- scale processes and an agent-based model to capture the
complexity of human-nature interactions. The research of phase I has demonstrated that
the approach is viable. The construction of a working model will be undertaken in the
second phase of the project. The modeling effort will be placed at the center of the land use
cluster and is to be fed by research findings from other sub-projects.

3.6.2. Objectives
The main objective of this sub-project is to construct a computer simulation platform to
predict land cover change within the Volta basin. Special emphasis will be put upon
extension of irrigated agriculture.
Specific research questions include:
• Where will land-cover and land use change take place in the future?
• What is the rate of land-cover changes over the next two decades?
• What classes of land use are emerging and what role do climate change and water
play as a constraint to development of land use systems?
• When do farmers make the transition from rainfed to irrigated agriculture?

3.6.3. Methods
In current LUCC modeling, there are two distinct forms of models (Irwin and Geoghegan,
2001; Veldkamp and Lambin, 2001): process models and statistical models. The statistical
models can be built based on the spatial data that are readily available and on known
spatial relations between land use change patterns and various socio-economic or natural
factors. The statistical modeling framework is simple but frequently cause problems
associated with causal relationships and the inclusion of spatial heterogeneity. The process
models are built on economic and natural process theories that identify the system
components and their interactions. The main advantage of such process models is the
inclusion of the actual complexity and interactions of system components. The high
demand for spatially disaggregated data is the main disadvantage. The GLOWA Volta
project has been pursued two different modeling approaches during the first phase. These
two different types of modeling approaches will continue during the second phase but the
main effort focus on constructing a working dynamic spatial simulation model: GV-LUDAS
(GLOWA Volta Land use Dynamic Simulator), of which a prototype has been developed
during the first phase.

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Model to predict
Atmospheric
Land use and cover
And water use clusters
changes

Socio-economic

Human decision making and drivers

Erosion-water
Decision making

Natural processes and constraints

balance model
processes

Characterisation Policy and

of soil properties external factors

Population
Crop simulation
growth
model
and migration

Vegetation
Land use
dynamics and
change detection
parameterisation

Spatial and Atmospheric

temporal scaling And water use clusters

Figure 2. The overall methodological framework for the integrated modeling approach
of the GLOWA Volta land use cluster.

GV-LUDAS is designed to simulate complex and dynamic interactions between natural

resources and human actors by coupling cellular automata and an agent-based model. The
computational framework is based on an objective oriented language, NetLogo, developed
by the complexity theory research group of Northwestern University. The spatial resolution
for natural processes is about 500-1000m and the time interval for spatial simulation is
three months. Figure 2 gives the overall model components that are to be implemented in
the model structure. In this framework, the heterogeneity and continuous changes of the
natural environment are presented as layers of a two-dimensional grid. Each grid cell will
store the status of each environmental parameter that is updated every time step. The main
natural processes considered are water balance, erosion-deposition, vegetation-growth
functions in naturally vegetated areas, and crop-growth functions in agricultural lands.
Investigation of detailed processes and modeling will be carried out in other sub-projects.
The inclusion of human decision-making processes for different land use options will be the
major challenge to build this model. During the first phase, it has been recognized that
there is an extreme diversity of land use-change processes within the study area. The
Multiscale Adaptive Model showed that the correlation between actual land use change
and various environmental factors is strongest at the finest spatial resolution, and
decreases gradually with an increase of the spatial coverage. This indicates that the most
detailed spatial resolution (e.g., household level) would be best to characterize the land use
change processes. In this predominantly agricultural society, individual households make
the land use decisions. From the household surveys conducted so far, it is clear that land
use strategies are based on the economic situation of the individual households, the level
of technology they have adopted, and their customary social framework. It should be noted,
however, that the greatest constraint for process-based land use change modeling is not
the availability of methodologies, but the lack of appropriate data with such a fine spatial
resolution. This is especially the case for the socio-economic variables. Therefore, a
compromise is necessary to include sufficient details of land use change drivers and
heterogeneity of the decision making processes.

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For further development of the model, villages have to be considered as the individual
decision makers or the optimum compromise unit to model socio-economic behavior. It is a
well-known fact that human behavior varies with group size, for example, groups of people
will make more risky decisions than individuals. The decision making at the village level is
often strongly influenced by local and national institutions. Therefore, considering the
village as an actor might include the influence of institutional arrangements in land use
related decision making. Considering the spatial extent of this modeling exercise
(400,000km2), village-level modeling should be more effective for upscaling and
downscaling of land use change models. Moreover, village-level spatial information is often
available from national census data and other socio-economic surveys such as the Ghana
Living Standard Survey (GLSS). In GV-LUDAS, individual agents (villages) store their own
variables that represent the characteristics of agent behavior and actual socio-economic
status. These variables include possible land use related socio-economic variables, such
as population, demographic structure, consumption, market orientation, land tenure,
existence of resource management institutes, etc. We expect most of these variables to be
available from national census (1984 and 1999) and GLSS survey outputs. Detailed socio-
economic studies will be conducted to provide missing variables that can be linked to the
national surveys through the common sampling frame (see W2).
The next challenge is to model the interactions between spatially distributed natural factors
and socio-economic drivers. Various modeling strategies are already documented (see
Irwin and Geoghegan, 2001). Considering the data requirement for socio-economic
modeling and also the spatial scale of individual actors (village), a rule-based system will
first be implemented, but the possibility to implement mathematical programming is also
pursued. Specific rules for individual villages will be directly derived from a Multiscale
Adaptive Model (MAM) in addition to actual census data in 1984 and 2000. MAM is able to
generate correlation coefficients between land use-change intensity and various proxy
environmental variables, such as terrain characterization, distance from surface water, and
distance from road (Park et al., 2002). The results from socio-economic surveys conducted
with the common sampling frame may provide further information. We assume the same
relationships will hold for the coming decades, unless there is a significant change in
opportunities. Calculated r-values for individual villages will be normalized on a 0-1 scale,
and used as a conditional probability that determines each village’s mobility and land use
choice at each time step.
The different types of land use conversion: diffusive and ‘hotspot’, will be included in the
simulation as modifying the mobility of individual actors. For the diffusive land use change
that occur at or near the existing villages, the agent will have much lower mobility due to
the shortage of available land and other socio-economic constraints. On the other hand,
such restriction will be relaxed for the ‘hotspot’ type land use conversion. The rate of
‘hotspot’ occurrence will be empirically derived from the comparison of actual land use
change and the number of new villages during the last 15 years. The location for newly
settled villages will be decided based on the probability surfaces derived from various
natural conditions. Especially the prediction of the transition from rainfed to irrigated
agriculture will greatly benefit from the explicit modeling of 'hotspot' type land use change.
The validation of the developed model needs special attention. The complexity inherent to
spatial simulation demands several approaches to model validation. We will apply various
existing methods to measure the prediction accuracy, following Turner et al. (2001) and
Manson (2001). These techniques include standard error matrix analysis, a multi-resolution
goodness of fit (Ft) procedure, and Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis.

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3.6.4. Milestones
• Programming natural process components (end of first year)
• Programming of human decision making component (end of second year)
• Verification of model and upgrading the model components (end of third year)
• Simulation of possible land use changes following specific policies and
technological innovations, especially the introduction of irrigation schemes in certain
parts of the basin.

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4. WATER USE

4.1 Introduction
The first two clusters provide some knowledge of water availability over space and time,
this cluster will focus on the sectoral demands and use of water and its institutional
management framework. During the first phase of the project cluster we learned about the
sectoral water use, particularly peoples’ access and demand for water, the national and
local institutional framework of water management. Based on that we produced some first
estimates for optimal water allocation. In the next phase we aim at (1) extending our
research activities to the Burkinabe part of the Volta Basin and (2) to analyze in a more
differentiated way the decision processes and feedbacks in the water using sectors,
including an impact assessment of the supply conditions and policies on people’s
livelihood, measured both on the micro- and macro-levels. The inter-sectoral water use
optimization model, where data for all water uses are integrated, will be shifted to the new
fourth cluster. Nevertheless the outcome of the water use cluster will still feed into the
optimization model.
The primary aim of this cluster remains to integrate socio-economic characteristics with
physical aspects of water use. Our objectives are (see Figure 3):
1. to evaluate irrigation potential and economic benefits from irrigation, based on
hydrological, agro-ecological, farm-household and farming characteristics
2. to examine domestic water use, management and policies
3. to analyze the impacts of agricultural and domestic water use on health and
peoples’ livelihoods

Household Livelihood

Health
- prevalence of water-related diseases
- transmission path of microbial infections
- cost of water-related illness

Irrigation Domestic Water use

- Agric. production and investment - household access to water
behaviour - household water demand behavior
- development of floodplains, - effective price for safe water
wetlands, small dams - property and access rights
- property and access rights - regulations and policies
- regulations and policies - ground water level, small dams
- water quality

Figure 3: Conceptual framework of the water use cluster

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 WATER USE

Therefore the cluster is divided into three sub-projects:

Sub-project W1: Runoff and Hydraulic Routing
This sub-project provides estimates of irrigation potential and the impact of floodplains
(development) on surface run-off. Furthermore it will assess groundwater flows and levels
which provides insights into drinking water availability in the rural areas.
Sub-project W2: Water and Livelihood
This sub-project assesses the prevalence of water-related diseases, also related to
environmental factors and available water quality and then evaluates particularly the
transmission path of microbial infections and the cost of water-related illness and their
impact on household livelihoods.
Sub-project W3: Institutional Analysis
This sub-project studies the formal and informal institutional settings and decision-making
processes at the local, national and international levels. This cross-sector approach aims at
analyzing the potentials and constraints of introducing and implementing new policies
aiming at sustainable resource management.

4.2 Sub-project W1 : Runoff and Hydraulic Routing

4.2.1 Research needs

The water use optimization model developed during the first project phase divided the river
system over a node-link network with thirteen nodes. Hydrologically speaking, this is meant
that water availability in the rivers had to be modeled and aggregated at a relatively high
level. Given the high aggregation level, the optimization model could be driven by historical
data and conceptual models. The first objective of the "Runoff and Hydraulic Routing" sub-
project was, therefore, the compilation of a comprehensive database with historical data. A
second objective was the development of a coarsely distributed conceptual model. The
database and conceptual models are now in place and can be incorporated directly in
economic optimization models (Taylor, 2002). Conceptual models transform rainfall
(historical or predicted) into river flow without detailed treatment of the underlying
hydrological processes. This limits their applicability under future scenarios with changed
land use that may affect the hydrology of the basin. In the second phase, we therefore seek
to operationalize a more physical distributed model (WASIM, Schulla J. and Jasper K.
1998). Because WASIM will be coupled with the atmospheric MM5 model, details
concerning this research activity are given under the Atmosphere Cluster. An added
advantage of WASIM is that it has a much finer resolution and the output can, therefore,
directly be used in a multi-scale optimization model (see cluster on “Technical Integration
and Decision Support”).
The development of the hydrological database and conceptual models brought up two new
questions. First, not all available data proved to be reliable, which leads to the questions of
how data quality can be assessed and how to deal with data uncertainty in model
predictions. Second, the conceptual models clearly suggested groundwater recharge could
only account for a maximum of 50% of total river flow. The remainder consists most likely
mainly of direct surface runoff from wetlands and floodplains immediately adjacent to the
streams and rivers. Wetlands and floodplains are also the sites where irrigation
development takes place. There is, therefore, a clear need to explicitly model floodplain
hydrology and the potential impact of irrigation development.
The research needs described above mainly refer to surface water. Groundwater levels
and flows also need to be taken into consideration. Groundwater flow feeds the river
system. The temporal and spatial distribution of groundwater levels determines the
availability of safe drinking water in village boreholes. Groundwater routing modeling was
started during the first phase. Because not much detail is known about the geohydrology of
the Volta Basin, it was necessary to develop routing models on the basis of inputs
(groundwater recharge) and outputs (river flow). These data became only available towards
the end of the first phase and, consequently, groundwater modeling started relatively late

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and will carry on into the second phase. The link between groundwater levels and drinking
water availability will also mainly take place in the second phase.

4.2.2 Objectives
Two new themes follow logically from first phase: 1) the effect of data quality and
uncertainty on (groundwater) modeling, and 2) impact of floodplains and floodplain
development on surface water runoff. In addition, two new themes came forward during the
workshops in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Accra, namely the development of small dams
and associated mixed water use (livestock, horticulture, domestic) and the potential impact
of the Bui hydropower dam that may be built in the next five years. Together with continued
activities from the first phase these lead to two general objectives:
• Modeling of groundwater flows and levels
• The impact of dams and floodplain development on river flow
The second objective also links up with new directions in the land use cluster in the sense
that it concentrates on land use change that has a direct impact on water availability such
as dams and irrigation development.
Associated with the groundwater related objective, we formulate three research questions:
• How can groundwater flow be modeled, given the uncertainty in available data?
• How do groundwater levels vary over time and space and how do they affect
drinking water availability?
• How can the groundwater modeling be extended to cover Burkina Faso as well?
• The second, surface water related objective can be attained by answering the
following research questions:
• What is the impact of floodplains and floodplain development on river flow?
• What is the impact of small dam development and associated water use on
livestock, horticulture, and domestic use?
• What is the impact, hydrologically and in terms of energy production, of the Bui
dam?
Finally, as a service function for the cluster on “Technical Integration and Decision
Support”, hydrologists will be involved in the development of interactive visualization tools
for water use optimization.

4.2.3 Methods
In light of the development of WRC's White Volta Pilot Project, much of the field activities
will be concentrated in the Upper East region. These field activities will lead to the
development of methodologies that can be applied in the remainder of the basin, especially
Burkina Faso, through cost- and time-effective consultancies. The respective research
questions will be addressed in the following ways:
How can groundwater flow be modeled, given the uncertainty in available data?
River flow is quantified by relating water levels to flows with a rating curve. Water levels are
relatively easy to measure with reasonable accuracy but rating curves are difficult to
establish and tend to change over time. By revisiting raw level and rating data and
measuring new rating curves, the inherent uncertainty in river flow will be established. We
seek cooperation with WMO that will establish 25 new hydrometric stations in the Volta
Basin in the framework of WHYCOS Volta, starting 1 January 2003. Contribution from
direct surface runoff (see question 4 below) will be accounted for.
During the first phase, inversion techniques based on the Levenberg-Marquardt method
were developed that can be used to parameterize the groundwater part of WASIM. With
Monte-Carlo techniques, based on the error distributions found in the field, the
parameterizations will be calculated many times over. The results give the reliability of the
groundwater flow predictions.

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How do groundwater levels vary over time and space and how do they affect
drinking water availability?
Point of departure is the map of 18,000 boreholes and underlying database developed
during the first phase. Water levels in a small sample of these boreholes in the Upper East
will be monitored intensively with data loggers.
How can the groundwater modeling be extended to cover Burkina Faso as well?
Burkina Faso has a better groundwater observation network than Ghana and in this more
drought-stricken country, groundwater data are more readily available. For most of the
Volta Basin, the geology found here is similar to that found in the Upper East region of
Ghana. The idea is to apply the same modeling techniques as used in Ghana.
What is the impact of floodplains and floodplain development on river flow?
First, floodplains will be mapped using existing Digital Elevation Models (DEM's). Second,
flooding on a sample of the floodplains will be established with radar based remote sensing
(van de Giesen, 2001). Thirdly, a hydraulic routing model will be implemented that
simulates runoff from and over the floodplains. Finally, these results, together with those
from the groundwater model, will be validated with historical river flow data. The
assessment of the impact of floodplain development will in first instance be based on
literature information. In general, evaporation of open water enriches the remaining water
with heavier isotopes. In cooperation with Bochum University, a DFG project is being
developed to investigate the isotopic profile of the main branches of the Volta River. One of
the benefits would be independent validation of the model based outputs.
What is the impact of small dam development and associated water use for
livestock, horticulture, and domestic use?
During the first phase, it was established that the large number of small dams (close to one
thousand in the White Volta basin alone) shows coherent statistical behavior. Spatial
clusters of dams in geologically similar environments can be modeled as one large
reservoir (Liebe, 2002). A decision support system profits from this in the sense that one
can work with (increased) dam densities instead of a multitude of many individual dams.
This method, developed for the Upper East, will be extended to Burkina Faso and the
Upper West and Northern regions of Ghana. In addition, water withdrawal for livestock,
domestic use and horticulture will be characterized using field measurements and remote
sensing.
Finally, it is important that constraints are found on the maximum practically irrigable area
for the water use optimization model. Large-scale irrigable areas are more or less known
from feasibility studies. Small scale, village-based irrigation may actually prove to be more
important. Based on the description of current small-scale irrigation, an irrigation-potential
map will be produced that takes physical factors such as terrain features and water
availability into account.
What is the impact, hydrologically and in terms of energy production, of the Bui
dam?
The Bui gorge in the Black Volta is technically a very obvious place to build a dam. Under
the new Ghanaian government, there is new interest to actually build this dam. Through
hydraulic modeling of the reservoir, the impact of the dam on downstream water availability
(especially in Lake Volta) will be simulated. The energy production and its vulnerability with
respect to droughts will be calculated so it can be included in the economic optimization
model. Main source of information will be the numerous feasibility studies.

4.2.4 Milestones
The following intermediate and final products mark the progress made in answering the
different research questions.
Groundwater modeling:
• Error assessment of available hydrological data.
• Monte-Carlo simulation of prediction errors
• Groundwater extraction for drinking water quantified

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• Vulnerability map for Upper East with respect to low groundwater levels
• Groundwater model extended to cover Burkina Faso
Surface water modeling
• Floodplain map
• Flood analysis of sampled floodplains
• Validated routing model for floodplain runoff
• Reservoir ensemble curves for Upper East and remainder of basin
• Water use characterization of small dams
• Irrigation potential map
• Impact assessment of Bui dam (hydrologically and in terms of energy production)

4.3 Sub-project W2 : Water and Livelihood

4.3.1 Research needs

During the first phase our focus was on questions of household water security and farming
activities, and to investigate malaria prevalence, as one of the major water related diseases
in the basin that is strongly related to environmental conditions. Therefore, in the past we
(1) examined peoples access and demand for water for domestic and agricultural use; (2)
assessed households direct and indirect expenditures for water; (3) analyzed farm
households production and investment decisions (3) finalized a pilot appraisal of faecal
coliform contamination at the water source and within the household of the surveyed
communities, and (4) collected malaria prevalence data in the Volta basin. However, in the
first phase primary data collection on household and community level was restricted to
Ghanaian part of the Volta basin. To be able to draw conclusions for the greater part of the
basin we need to expand our field research to the Burkinabe part of the Volta basin, as the
situation in Ghana cannot just be translated to Burkina Faso. Water supply coverage in
Burkina Faso is about 81% in the urban areas and about 43% in the rural areas. Out of the
84%, it is 47% of the population that relies on public taps and 25% are connected to the
piped system (DHS,1999).2 However, in the fast growing urban areas such as
Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, there is a rising importance of small private
operators in the potable water system, especially in water distribution to the low-income
residential areas. Only 23% of the population is directly served through the National Office
of Water and Sanitation (ONEA). ONEA delegates the management of standpipes to
independent managers. As much as 77% of the population is served through standpipes
connected to ONEA, but also private boreholes, independent water stations and carters,
especially in the outskirts (WSP, 2000). In the rural areas about 50% rely on shallow well,
41% on boreholes and 6% fetch water directly from streams or ponds.
However, understanding the determinants of access to and demand for water of different
quality is only one key aspect in securing peoples water needs. Nowadays it is well
acknowledged that water security, peoples health and their well-being are strongly
interrelated. We know that there are great health hazards of poor water supply and
sanitation, and the health benefits through improved water supply and sanitation are
considerable. Moreover, in the past ten years the evidence and the awareness has risen
that the quantity of water, when available, also has a great impact on the common endemic
diarrheas in developing countries. This is because accessible, plentiful supplies of water
facilitate and encourage better hygiene in general, and more hand-washing in particular.
In general, it is well acknowledged that there is a clear interdependency between water
supply of sufficient quantity and quality – health and poverty. Access to safe water supply is
vital for people’s health and well-being, as household water security contributes to a
healthy and productive live and thereby helps to reduce poverty (John and Abel, 2002;
Hoddinott, 1997).

2
This includes water from boreholes and the public piped system.
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 WATER USE

The major water-related diseases in the Volta basin are diarrhea through faecal-oral
infections, malaria, schistosomiasis, and guinea worm. All four have severe direct and
indirect impacts on people’s – particularly children’s - morbidity and mortality and thus on
their well-being. However, water-related diseases are multifaceted regarding their causes,
feedbacks, transmission and burden of illness. They are based on environmental factors
(e.g. temperature, humidity etc.), land use (e.g. agricultural activities/irrigation, land cover
and the distribution of water bodies respectively), type of water supply, water source and
vector/parasite characteristics (water quality and quantity, entomology), but also peoples
water access and protection seeking behavior and their well-being, including their immune
and nutrition status.
We already know that Malaria is highly endemic in Ghana and Burkina Faso, and
contributes substantially to the burden of illness. Malaria is seasonal in the region, with
most disease and deaths occurring during or shortly after the end of the rainy season
(Müller et al. 2001). Most parts of Ghana and Burkina Faso are hyper/holoendemic for
malaria, but the northern parts of Burkina Faso have significantly lower transmission
intensities. Consequently, young children and pregnant women are the groups at highest
risk for severe disease and death in most areas of the Volta Basin. Knowledge about the
distribution of malaria is an important tool for establishing successful disease control
programs. The impact of malaria is governed by a large number of factors relating the
parasite, the vector and the host. Climatic and environmental factors such as temperature,
precipitation, humidity, presence of water and vegetation play an important role alongside
with treatment and prevention seeking behaviors of the population (Kleinschmidt et al.
2001, Okrah et al. 2001).
Furthermore we know that Schistosomiasis, another water-related disease, is predominant
along the Volta River and the lake, where hot spots of schistosomiasis prevalence are
reported, particularly related to the construction of the Akosombo dam and various small
dams upstream. A health study conducted by the Ghana’s Ministry of Health in the area of
the Tono irrigation site in Navrongo revealed that 699 school children out of 779 tested,
were infected from urinal and intestinal schistosomiasis (ICOUR, 2002). Of much concern
are also diarrheal diseases, particularly among children that are often related to the
consumption of contaminated drinking water. The prevalence of diarrhea with children
under 5 years for example is about 20% in Ghana. Generally, one in nine children born in
Ghana die before the fifth birthday (DHS, 1998). The under-five child mortality rate in the
rural area around Nouna, Burkina Faso was estimated to be 3,5% between 1993 and 1998
(Sankoh et al. 2001). Water, sanitation and hygiene interventions are estimated to reduce
diarrheal diseases on average by between 1/4 and 1/3 (WHO,UNICEF, 2000).
Furthermore, guinea worm prevalence (Dracunculiasis) is a concern in the basin, which is
also transmitted through drinking water containing infected cyclops. WHO currently
undertakes a campaign for a worldwide eradication of guinea worm. Ghana is the third-
ranked endemic country, with the largest number of reported cases after Sudan and
Nigeria. In 2001, a total of 779 villages had one or more cases of guinea worm. Three
regions reported about 93% of the cases (4384 out of 4738): these are Northern Region
(62%), Brong-Ahafo (17%) and Volta (11%). Burkina has the fifth highest number of
reported dracunculiasis cases – 1021 cases (WHO, 2002).
Although there are some studies analyzing the prevalence, transmission and risk of
morbidity and mortality due to diarrhea, schistosomiasis, guinea worm and malaria, we only
know little about the economic burden of illness and when household decide to invest into
their protection. Moreover, there is a need to examine the actual effect and value of
interventions.
Our first exploration of water quality in phase 1 already gave strong indication of a seasonal
variation of water quality of the source used by the households. Also there is evidence of a
strong degradation of water quality between point of water source and the “drinking cup” of
the household members due to poor handling and storage behavior. It is well known that
one major transmission route of diarrheal pathogens is water. Primary barriers to this
transmission route include preventing the contamination of water by faecal material, both at

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the source and in transit (e.g. storage vessel). Secondary barriers remove pathogens once
they have got into water supplies, and include methods of purification both at the source
and in the home. Preventing transmission through water thus requires action in both the
public domain and in the sphere of domestic hygiene (Cairncross et. al., 1996).
The analysis of determinants for water contamination and the assessment of the
transmission path of microbial infections and peoples subsequent physical and economic
burden of illness are yet to be undertaken. Furthermore, the basin-wide assessment of the
prevalence of further water-related diseases is absent.

4.3.2 Objectives
Therefore, in the second phase we aim at continuing this research through extending the
analysis of causalities and feedbacks between (1) household access to and demand for
water of different quality, (2) intra-household water use behavior, (3) risk of adverse health
impacts and (4) household livelihoods.
Within GLOWA research we cannot cover all aspects and feedbacks in detail, rather our
efforts have to be focused. Therefore in the context of our overall objective of developing a
decisions support system and to assure conceptual continuity of our ongoing research
activities regarding household access and demand for water, we prioritized research needs
and therefore will focus on:
• the extension of our ongoing research on community and household water supply
and agricultural activities to Burkina Faso;
• the evaluation of the basin-wide prevalence of water-related diseases and their
economic burden to the household; both can subsequently feed into the decision-
support system, helping to assess tradeoffs between interventions such as water
supply development, hygiene education, bed-net interventions and the burden of
illness the population faces;
• a better understanding of the role of water quality and household behavior in
determining morbidity through microbial infections.
In order to achieve these objectives and to expand the activities of GLOWA Volta I, we
propose the following:
Extend the analysis of community and household water supply and household
agricultural production behavior to the Burkinabe Volta Basin
So far there is only little knowledge about (farm) households’ water demand behavior and
the institutional context of domestic water supply and irrigation in Burkina Faso. Thus, this
component aims at answering the following research questions:
• What are the existing formal and informal institutions and their responsibilities at the
community level in terms of water management?
• How are access, demand and usage of water by households for domestic and
agricultural purposes?
• What is the direct and indirect household expenditure for water from different
sources?
• How is the agricultural production and investment behavior of farm households?
Assess the prevalence of water-related diseases in the Ghanaian and Burkinabe
Volta Basin
Based on the collection of primary data on (reported) symptoms for diarrhea,
schistosomiasis, guinea worm and malaria, we will assess the prevalence of water-related
diseases in the basin. In addition secondary data will be collected in order to better
extrapolate to the basin level.
Evaluate the economic burden of water-related illness
In addition to the physical burden of illness, the population suffers a subsequent economic
burden of water-related illness, which needs to be considered within national water supply
and health strategies. Therefore we will analyze the

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• direct cost of water-related illness (e.g. drugs, consultation, time cost through days
of work lost etc.) and
• indirect cost of water-related illness (e.g. income loss through reduced productive
capacity, e.g. in agriculture; labor hired in at the time of illness).
Analyze the determinants of diarrheal diseases and health gains from improved
water supply
After the examination of prevalence and cost of water-related diseases this component will
focus on diarrhea as the major water-based disease. We aim at studying in detail the role
of water supply (also households’ source choice), water usage behavior, the knowledge of
route of transmission, environmental quality incl. sanitation in determining diarrheal
diseases. Furthermore, household defensive/protection seeking behavior will be examined
and (seasonal) drinking water quality in respect to bacteriological contamination at the
source and within the household analyzed. Besides, we aim at the evaluation of potential
benefits from improved water supply and hygiene education to help guide policy
interventions.
Thus, the main research questions we will try to answer are:
• What are the determinants of diarrheal diseases?
• What are the health gains in terms of diarrheal diseases from policy interventions
that provide improved water supply? ; How do the gains vary with household
circumstances and characteristics?

4.3.3 Methods
The main instrument to answer the research questions is the collection of primary data
through a community and household survey. In the following the main methods and
instruments to achieve the research objectives are listed:
• Review of (gray) literature and collect secondary data available on
demography and health, household living conditions, and the water sector in
Burkina Faso
• Design of primary data collection – Common Sampling Frame
Similar to our survey undertaken in Ghana in the first phase, we plan to design a
common sample frame based on available nationwide data as well, enabling us to
better extrapolate findings. This could be the national survey of household budgets
and consumption, the national survey on household living conditions or the general
Population and Housing Census. Since the common sampling frame concept was
successfully tested in Ghana, we will apply a similar sampling frame in Burkina
Faso (see for more details Berger et al. 2002 and Iskandarani et al., 2002).
In Ghana, the households visited during the first round will be revisited and
surveyed both, during the rainy and the dry season, which allows us to have a panel
data set, but especially to complement and improve our data set with health related
(disease prevalence, transmission, cost of illness, hygiene, sanitation etc.) and
water quality data. Additional sites will be selected, which are known for their
schistosomiasis and guinea worm prevalence.
In Burkina Faso about 20 communities and 500 households will be selected within
the sampling framework indicated above. From the selected households, data on
water demand, water quality at the source and within the household, expenditure for
water and agricultural activities (similar to phase 1 in Ghana), but also health related
data (e.g. reported prevalence, cost) will be collected.
Since within the survey, both - households with improved and those with traditional
water access - will be surveyed, this will enable us to assess the health outcomes
related to development of water supply.
• Statistical Analysis
Based on the primary data collection within the common sampling frame we will
develop
ð Household discrete-continuous Choice Model for domestic water

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This discrete choice model can characterize how a household decides which water
source to use and how much water to use from a particular source. It has two parts
(1) a discrete choice model that describes the probability that a household will
choose a particular water source, e.g. surface water, well, borehole and (2) a
continuous demand model that describes the quantity of water used by the
household from the chosen source.
ð Agricultural production and investment decision model
This farm household model characterizes how a farmer decides on a particular
production structure (e.g. crop, no. of cropping seasons) and technology level (e.g.
fertilizer, irrigation)
ð Modeling the determinants of diarrheal diseases
A regression model will estimate the determinants of diarrhea with explicitly
differentiating the role of water quality, water usage behavior, household defensive
behavior and the sanitation environment.
ð Measurement of health gains from policy interventions that improve water
supply
Two methods of evaluating the health gains in terms of diarrheal disease can be
used: (1) the method of propensity score matching, where two groups are identified:
those households that have improved water supply (piped water or borehole) and
those that do not. Units with improved water (the “treated” group) are matched to
households without (control group) on the basis of propensity scores; and (2) the
OLS regression method to run a regression of the outcome indicator (e.g. days of
illness) on a dummy variable for improved supply.
ð Measurement of welfare effects of adequate water supply by including health
implications
Based on the water demand analysis and the measurement of health gains through
improved water supply, the cost effectiveness of policy interventions can be
estimated.

• Mapping
The existing malaria risk map for West Africa (Kleinschmidt, et al 2000) will be used
as the basis for the Volta Basin risk map. The map and underlying model will be
adjusted with parameters collected in the other GLOWA Volta sub-projects to make
it Basin specific.3 Collected prevalence data within the 1. phase and the malaria
reported data collected in the household survey will be used to validate the model.
The risk map will be integrated into the DSS to be able to use it for scenario
prediction. Besides, hot spots of schistosomiasis and guinea worm prevalence will
be mapped.

4.3.4 Milestones
• Design of a common sampling frame for Burkina Faso
• Design of questionnaires for the evaluation of household water demand and usage,
health status, agricultural activities and household characteristics
• Conduct community and household survey in Burkina Faso, incl. water and soil
quality measurements
• Conduct household survey in Ghana, incl. water quality measurements
• Establish data base for collected primary data (see also Cluster D)
• Statistical data analysis
• Malaria risk map; mapping of ‘hot spots’ of schistosomiasis and guinea worm
prevalence

3
The MARA/ARMA initiative first developed a risk model for the whole of Africa based on
meteorological data and vector characteristics; the developed maps show climatological suitability
for transmission, length of transmission season and population at risk for malaria for the African
continent (MARA/ARMA, 1998).
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The structure of water-related health research is sketched in Figure 4.

Water related health problems

1. Prevalence of diarrhea, malaria, schistosomiasis, guinea worm

=> Secondary data, household interviews, mapping

2. Cost of water-related illness

=> household interviews: direct and indirect cost of illness

3. Determinants of diarrhea
=> water quality measurement at the source and hh
=>household interviews and observation on water use
and protection seeking behaviour

Measurement of health gains from

improved water supply

Figure 4: Structure of water-related health research within

GLOWA Volta

4.4 Sub-project W3: Institutional Analysis

4.4.1 Research needs

With reference to the DSS, the constraints to policy interventions need to be analyzed in
the second phase. More empirical information about possible constraints to policy design
and implementation and an inventory of differentiated variables will be provided. In the
second phase this sub-project has three general tasks:
• follow up of results of the first phase
• The basis of empirical data has to be extended to facilitate comparisons with the
results of previous and ongoing research.
• New methodological approaches are required to evaluate relevant variables in the
analysis of institutions concerned with Integrated Water Resources Management.
In order to fulfill these tasks the sub-project will focus on three objectives as defined below.
It will operate on three institutional levels: local, national and international.
Research of the 1st phase has yielded results concerning the performance of the national
institutions in Ghana and potentials and constraints of both national and international co-
operation and management (Andreini et al. 2000; Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-
Universität zu Bonn 2001; van Edig et al. 2001, 2002a, 2002b; van Edig & Youkhana
2002). With an emphasis on Ghana, official water policies, laws and regulations have been
outlined and analyzed. The Burkinabe legislation and national strategies concerning
integrated water management are still being investigated. As in Ghana, issues of
implementation at the local level still have to be studied in Burkina Faso.
In February 2001 the National Assembly of Burkina Faso passed a new law, which marks a
turning point in the national water legislation, addressing the most important problems of
water management. The Burkinabe government has adopted a new strategy of integrated
water management (“Plan d’action de l’eau”), which also addresses issues of

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transboundary management (cf. DGH 2001, 2002). Recently, the responsibility for the
water sector was transferred from the Ministry of Environment and Water (MEE) to the
Ministry of Agriculture. The impact of this administrative change remains to be seen.
Further, Burkina Faso is involved in a Regional Plan of Action aiming at transboundary
water management as proposed by the Action Program of the GEF workshop in Accra in
1999. However, according to a comprehensive assessment of the water management
sector (DGH 2001) the institutional setting is characterized as weak in terms of policy
implementation.
With reference to Ghana, first findings (van Edig et al. 2002b) have corroborated the
existence of discrepancies between the laws and regulations of the WRC and the practices
of water management at the local level. Hints to problems of implementation and
enforcement of WRC policies were confirmed in recent discussions with our WRC partners
in the context of two planning workshops in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and in Accra: lack of
capacity and resources, non-compliance by traditional or local authorities, persistence of
traditional or locally developed procedures which ignore official policies (cf. also Opoku-
Agyemang 2001; UNEP/UNCHS 2001).
Van Edig et al. (2002b) also pointed to the issue of (intra-) national and international
communication requiring closer investigation (for Burkina Faso see DGH 2001). Institutions
comprise, apart from formal rules that limit the scope of political choices, channels of
communication, language codes and discourses of the interest groups at work (Immergut
1998; DiMaggio & Powell 1991). Communication processes are crucial factors determining
the success or failure of water management institutions. Communication between various
actors, including development agencies, has been studied to some extent at the local level
(e.g. Mundy & Compton 1995; Bierschenk, Chauveau & Olivier de Sardan 2000). On the
national level there are communication assessments that serve operational staff and
governments to get a grasp of the communication needs in relation to a development
project or a reform initiative such as the country specific Communication Audits of the
World Bank (see also DGH 2001). However, in-depth studies on processes of
communication between water management institutions and their impact on the
development of national and international regulations of water management have not been
done so far.
Further, as in many Sub-Saharan countries, privatization of water supply utility
management has been introduced in Ghana and Burkina Faso (van Edig & Youkhana
2002). In the past, water supply utilities in Africa have been state-run monopolies that
depended on subsidized tariff schemes. Those institutions had many clear disadvantages
such as unsustainable water use, poor service, bad water quality, high water losses, and
little or no services for the poor (Haffar 2001; World Bank 2001). Upon advice of
international donor organizations like the World Bank and the IMF, participation of private
investors has been initiated. Re-arrangement of the management of the urban drinking
water supply with respect to Private Sector Participation (PSP) strategies as well as a new
water and sanitation legislation is taking place in both countries.
The success of water management reforms depends on the establishment of regulatory
agencies with sufficient capacities to manage water resources (Mensah 1999; van Edig &
Youkhana 2002). They play a central role within the new supply systems and their
fulfillments have an important effect on the sustainability of the reforms. Independent
regulation agencies have a difficult political role, but they can protect important consumer
interests, encourage efficiency, address issues of misuse of power monopolies and other
forms of market misuse, determine the volume and composition of investment (Nairobi
Workshop on Utility Regulation in Africa 2000). In view of recently established PSP
strategies in Burkina Faso and intentions to invite the private sector to participate in the
urban water sector in Ghana within the next few years, the water utilities and resources
regulatory agencies involved will face new challenges. It will be of major interest to explore,
how regulators’ roles are technically and politically defined in Ghana and Burkina Faso, in
which way they are institutionalized, and which backup they receive politically as well as
through legislative reforms.

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4.4.2 Objectives
In general, sub-project W3 wants to analyze in both countries
• the constraints to the implementation of official strategies, regulations and laws
• the efficiency of water management institutions on the local, national and
international levels.
In a continuous process of policy development and implementation only a temporal section
can be captured empirically. However, the expected insights will add a new dimension to
the cross-disciplinary discussion of institutional change. More generally, the studies will
contribute to understand political factors involved in decentralization processes (cf. Olivier
de Sardan 1999), in privatization and in the concurrent reorganization of institutions.
In the 2nd phase in-depth studies of living institutions are required at all levels. The actual
research needs lead to three objectives:
Analyzing potentials of and constraints to implementing the policies of the WRC at
district level in Ghana.
According to the WRC, the district level is considered as the interface where national and
local regulations intersect. The district provides a logical and convenient starting point for
the analysis of policy implementation. Case studies of water management institutions on
and below the district level will contribute to closing the knowledge gap concerning the
reception of official resource management regulations and, constraints to decentralization
policies.
Research questions:
• Precisely in which ways is the WRC and its policies received on the district and
lower administrative levels ?
• Which groups/individuals have interest in implementing official policies on the
community and district levels?
• What are the regulations and the means of enforcement by traditional leaders and
local politicians?
• Functioning/non-functioning of national/local regulation systems: Which of them are
“effective” ?
• Which roles do NGOs and civil society groupings play vis-à-vis government and
traditional authorities?
Analyzing processes of communication between various water management
institutions and their consequences for the legislative and executive processes in
Ghana and Burkina Faso
Water management institutions, and their constituent members, are to be considered as
stakeholders themselves, not just as bodies which control/mediate stakeholders on "lower"
political levels. Institutions constitute actors as well as constrain them (DiMaggio & Powell
1991). Understanding (1) the constraints to effective communication and (2) the way
policymakers think about rules and standards, is critical to any analysis of institutions.
Research questions are developed in the framework of two approaches to communication:
• flows/availability of information in the context of the classical communication
model (“sender – message - receiver”):
ð Which media/channels/technologies are employed by Ghanaian and Burkinabe
institutions as well as by external support agencies (ESA) in communicating
about policies at the same levels of administration, as well as directed to
higher/lower levels of administration?
ð What is the scope of available information and the distribution of knowledge:
Who knows how much about the relevant legal situations on every one of the
administrative levels?
ð In which ways is feedback from lower administrative levels perceived on the
national level?
• the relationship between normative rhetoric and political practice:
ð What are the official policies?
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ð Where do “democratic” procedures, “participation” and bottom-up approaches

come in – rhetorically and practically?
ð In what way is policy making related to “political will” and/or to strategies of fund
raising ?
ð Are NGOs and civil society groupings perceived as mediators, as contributors
or as competitors?
Analyzing procedures of institutional reform in the water sector with regard to
private sector participation in Ghana and Burkina Faso.
This comparative approach will include the impact of international donor policies on the
restructuring process of water legislation and the role of new regulatory agencies.

Research questions:
• Why and how were the legal acts formulated and ratified with respect to the role of
international donor organizations and their conditions to provide the water
management reforms?
• How do the privatization regulations function (viewed from inside the institution)?
• Which type(s) of institution performs better vis-à-vis sustainable water management
and well-being of the population and are there alternatives to the proposed PSP
strategies like they are suggested in Public Private Partnership (PPP) models?

4.4.3 Methods
The conceptual tools of legal pluralism (Benda-Beckmann et al. 1996, 1997; Spiertz 2000)
and of the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (Ostrom 1999) will be
combined. With limited resources at hand, our work will be confined to institutional “action
arenas” in Accra and Ouagadougou on the one hand and in selected rural districts on the
other hand. Selection will be matched to the socio-economic sample frames in Ghana and
Burkina Faso (see sub-project W2) where possible. In view of the new and extensive
research needs new methods have to be developed and tested. This sub-project needs to
be supported by a comparatively large international team.
The following methods will be used:
• The research team will follow up on the current official strategies concerning water
resources management and will gain an overview of technical communication
practices in both countries. Policy papers have to be analyzed. Reviews and
analyses of written sources will be supplemented by interviews with key informants
from government and donor agencies in both partner countries.
• In close cooperation with the other sub-projects and interested parties in both
African countries comparative case studies and interview guidelines (based, among
others, on the selective use of Lusthaus et al. 1999 and Saleth & Dinar 1999) will be
designed to fit the three research domains.
• Concerning the study of potentials of and constraints to policy implementation at the
district level in Ghana, three districts will be selected in the Upper East Region,
where in 2003 the WRC will start a pilot project to improve the water management
of a section of the White Volta Basin. For comparative purposes, one of the districts
will be selected outside the pilot project area. The doctoral student currently working
in the UER will accompany the project design and kick-off from January – April
2003. The new Ph.D. student will follow up on the development of this pilot project.
• With respect to Burkina Faso, the community and household questionnaires of sub-
project W2 will, among others, include questions pertaining to the performance of
and the interaction within and between different levels of water management
institutions.
• The data are collected by
a) open or semi-structured interviews of key informants in the water management
institutions in Ghana and in Burkina Faso on all political-administrative levels. To be
repeated as acquisition of data proceeds and to follow up on-going processes.

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b) open interviews with external support agencies and research organizations (GTZ,
DANIDA, World Bank, GEF, NGOs etc. etc. ) To be repeated at regular intervals to
follow up on-going processes.
c) participant observation during meetings, if accessible and if the medium of
conversation is English, French or one of the languages spoken by some of our
team members.
• In the rural areas interpreters and field assistants will be employed.
• Recurrently, the progress of and constraints to data collection need to be mutually
reflected on (workshops, meetings).

4.4.4 Milestones
• interview guidelines
• interim reports by all team members
• inventory of differentiated variables
• scenarios developed
• final reports by all team members
• presentations in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Germany
• publications

4.5 Continued Activities

Several activities started during the first phase, will phase out in the first year of the second
phase. These are basically PhD projects that started mid of the first phase and have to be
finalized within a timeframe of 3 years. This includes:
1. Runoff and Hydraulic Routing
Barnabas Amisigo, a PhD student examining groundwater and river flow interaction, will
continue this research for another 18 month in the second phase.
2. Household water demand behavior analysis in Ghana
After a finalizing the implementation of the common sampling frame/ household survey the
respective PhD candidate is currently analyzing the collected data. The PhD is expected to
be completed beginning of 2003
3. Institutional Analysis of local water management in Ghana and Burkina Faso
Field research about the local management of water resources in the irrigation sector is
currently conducted by a Ph.D.-candidate in the Upper East Region of Ghana. This
researcher will monitor the first part of the White Volta pilot project.
In addition, a PhD student doing field research in Burkina Faso is pursuing a multi-level
analysis of water management issues in the context of decentralization. Analysis of the
institutional setup, official regulations and policies and of the scope of actors (development
organizations, ministries, NGOs) involved in the decentralization process of the water
management sector at the national level are followed by case studies on the development
and constraints of institutions formed at the local level.

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 TECHNICAL INTEGRATION AND DECISION SUPPORT

5. TECHNICAL INTEGRATION AND DECISION SUPPORT

5.1 Introduction
The overall goal of GLOWA Volta is to develop, in close collaboration with our local and
international partners, a scientific information system that will integrate knowledge and
provide decision support for the planning, management and use of water resources in the
Volta basin. In this section, we will first give a brief overview of our understanding of
scientific information systems and decision support and then define the research objectives
for the second phase of GLOWA Volta. We will also highlight how our research of phase I
prepared the grounds for the technical integration of our environmental and socio-economic
modeling sub-systems.
How a Decision Support System (DSS) should be used and how useful its use is, these are
questions that regularly provoke long discussions in interdisciplinary research groups,
especially between natural and social scientists. One of the reasons, why these
discussions often turn into an emotion-led dispute, is the clash of two management or
policy paradigms.
The modernist paradigm of “rational” and “objective” natural resource management is
usually advocated by natural scientists. At the core of this paradigm is the conviction that
more scientific knowledge is directly linked to appropriate public action. The role of
researchers is accordingly to provide this knowledge to technocratic planners, whose role it
is then to prepare resource use plans to be implemented by lawmakers and authorities.
The main tool for transferring this knowledge from researchers to planners is the DSS,
which usually integrates computational modules for data management, simulation,
optimization, and visualization. Once it has successfully been tested, the DSS is typically
located, run and maintained at a government agency.
The antagonistic, “postmodern” paradigm of natural resource management emphasizes the
subjective and political dimension of natural resource management. Although advocates of
this paradigm admit that the absence of scientific knowledge can sometimes constrain the
effective management of natural resources, an ineffective political process is considered far
more important. The role of researchers is, therefore, to facilitate and accompany a
participatory process of decision-making in which stakeholders negotiate over different
uses of natural resources. A computational DSS may be employed as a knowledge tool,
but in a different way than in the modernist paradigm. Instead of transferring knowledge
from scientists to non-scientists, it is used to combine existing knowledge from different
stakeholders, visualize the prospects of joint action, and thereby generate conflict
solutions, shared and trusted by all stakeholders.
In GLOWA Volta, we adopt a view lying between these two paradigms. We do not
subscribe to the pure modernist paradigm, because we are aware that a process-based
understanding of the complex interactions between environmental and socio-economic
systems can be at best only weakly predictive. We are also aware that the capacity of
institutions and stakeholders in developing countries to apply scientific knowledge and
translate this knowledge into public policy has yet to be built up. On the other hand, we do
not subscribe to the pure postmodernist paradigm, because we see our role as scientists in
revealing the uncertainty inherent in natural resource management rather than in facilitating
the exchange of subjective, and sometimes poorly informed, points of view. We see also
the danger that becoming facilitators of participatory resource management would over-
extend our skills as scientists and might even weaken our ability to make valuable scientific
contributions to a better understanding of the environmental and socio-economic systems
under study. We believe that in an information-poor environment, such as the Volta basin,
integrating and creating scientific knowledge is per se beneficial. But our intention is to
provide knowledge that is not only necessary but also sufficient to be applied by policy
makers, public and private institutions, as well as individual stakeholders such as villagers
and farm households.

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The research in this cluster will therefore seek to bridge this gap between creating and
applying knowledge in the course of a “knowledge exchange” process that culminates in a
policy dialogue. By policy dialogue we refer here to the process of building a scientific
information system through continuous interactions between the project scientists, our local
research partners, the policy makers, and individual stakeholders. Together with our main
“clients,” we will test our information system at local level and step by step improve its
applicability. We will also intensify the institutional ties in our policy network, train young
researchers and professionals and thereby build research-based capacity in the riparian
countries.
In phase I, we focused our research on creating scientific knowledge and achieved the
following three integrated goals: scintillometer measurements that bridge the scale gap
between hydrology and meteorology, development of a common sampling frame for
gathering social and physical data, and an economic water use optimization model that
accommodates hydrological and institutional constraints. The links to the first two
milestones, the scintillometer measurements and the common sampling frame, have been
summarized in the atmosphere and land use clusters. Both lay the foundation for the
technical integration of meteorological/hydrological models and biophysical/socio-economic
models. The third milestone, the water use optimization model, is the point of departure for
the coupling of all these environmental and socio-economic modeling sub-systems in
phase II. As outlined in Berger and Ringler (2002), we will extend this optimization
approach within a multi-level multi-agent framework.
In phase II, we will divide the research in this cluster into the following sub-projects:
• Sub-project D1: Technical integration of socio-economic and environmental
modeling sub-systems
• Sub-project D2: Household decision making and policy response
• Sub-project D3: Experimental application of scientific knowledge (policy pilot study)
• Sub-project D4: Initiation of policy dialogue at basin level
The first two sub-projects relate to the challenge of creating scientific knowledge; we will
continue to integrate our “disciplinary” sub-models within a multi-level multi-agent
framework and further develop the technical core of our integrated information system. The
third sub-project stands between the challenges of creating and applying scientific
knowledge; we will test in a policy pilot study, how our scientific knowledge can actually be
used together with one of our main “clients,” the Ghanaian Water Resources Commission.
This pilot study will accompany the process of policy implementation in a Northern district
in Ghana; it will thereby provide an excellent opportunity of “learning-by-doing.” The fourth
sub-project relates to the challenge of applying scientific knowledge; we will build research-
based capacity in close collaboration with our research partners and thus initialize the
policy dialogue at basin level. This process of policy dialogue will be based on the results
from research related to the first three sub-projects. It will be finalized in phase III of
GLOWA Volta, where we will fully implement the scientific information system together with
our clients in the Volta basin.

5.2 Sub-project D1: Technical integration of socio-economic and environmental

modeling sub-systems

5.2.1 Research needs

As stated in the introduction of this proposal, the concepts of integrating our “disciplinary”
models were developed in phase I at the three integrative focal points atmosphere, land
use, and water allocation. This sub-project aims at the technical integration of these socio-
economic and environmental modeling sub-systems. Ideally, all modeling sub-systems
would be fully coupled and run simultaneously both for scientific analysis and – interactively
– for decision support. Practically this is not possible and desirable for two reasons. First,
the computational capacity, especially with respect to climate simulations, does not exist.
And second, excess information is produced at great cost, only to be condensed for

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decision support. The questions addressed by this sub-project are, which models should be
coupled at which level and how information should be made interactively accessible.
The nucleus of our scientific information system is the water optimization model, which was
presented at the GLOWA Status Conference in Munich. Our approach was to construct
and run this integrated computer model from the onset of the project and use it as an
immediate tool for communication among the scientists. To keep the “entry barriers” low for
all project scientists, we implemented the water optimization model as an integrated
spreadsheet-based application. The model represents the decision rules and constraints of
water users, the physical water resources system as well as the production functions and
technology sets. The structural representation of economic motives and decisions is based
on micro-economic theory. Water allocation among competing water uses is the result of
agents’ decisions that are mimicked by solving a constrained maximization problem.
Biophysical and socio-economic processes are integrated through production functions and
agent decision rules (for example, profit-maximization on competitive markets). Building on
this concept of Mathematical Programming, we will continue to develop and couple our
different modeling sub-systems.

A- Time series statistical

models, STELLA models
with no human dimension
B- Time series models with
human decision-making
explicitly modeled
C- Most traditional GIS
situations
D- GIS modeling with an
explicit temporal
component (e.g. Cellular
Automata models)
E- Econometric (regression)
and Game Theoretic
models
F- Spatial Dynamic Modeling
(e.g GV-LUDAS)
G- Inter-sectoral Water
Optimization Model Based on Agarwal et al.(in press).

Figure 5: Complexity of human-environmental models

Figure 5 shows the dimensionality of the different models to capture human-environmental

dynamics. The three axes measure the specific model complexity of time, space and
human decision making, based on the indices of complexity proposed by Agarwal et al. (in
press). Temporal complexity refers to the time step and duration of the processes being
modeled; spatial complexity refers to their resolution and extent; and human decision
making complexity refers to the agents involved and their domains. (The term ‘domain’
means here the broadest form of social organization within which the decision making of
the model agents is captured. For example, the domain of the water optimization model of
phase I was the nation and the model agent was the aggregate of all water users.)
The atmosphere and hydrology models developed in phase I are relatively complex in the
time and space dimension. But they are very low in the human decision making dimension
because they include only biophysical variables. On the other hand, the econometric
models developed in the water use cluster capture a great deal of human decision making
complexity but include relatively little temporal and spatial complexity. In the first phase, we

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developed also two hybrid models that combine biophysical and socio-economic aspects of
human-environment interactions. GV-LUDAS operates on a relatively fine temporal and
spatial scale and represents human decision making by heuristic decision rules at village
level. The first version of the inter-sectoral water optimization model, in contrast, reflects
the economic rationale of human decision-making and competitive markets but captures
the time and space dimension rather coarsely.
In phase II we will continue to couple our biophysical modeling sub-systems and increase
their temporal and spatial complexity. We will also link these biophysical modeling sub-
systems to agent decision rules and domains and thereby integrate the human decision
making dimension. For this purpose we will use two basic types of agent-based models
operating on different temporal and spatial scales. The first one is an enriched fine-scale
hybrid model which will be applied to “hot spot” case studies, especially addressing the
question of how farm households and villages switch from rain-fed to irrigated land use
systems (see below in sub-project D2). The second one is a further developed broad-scale
water optimization model that will be applied to the question of trans-boundary and inter-
sectoral water allocation.

5.2.2 Objectives
This sub-project has the following specific objectives in phase II:
• Substitution of secondary data with primary data from our own surveys and field
measurements especially in the water optimization model.
• Consideration of cross-price elasticities and more detailed energy markets as a first
step towards a general equilibrium model.
• Identification of “critical” variables (sensitivity analyses) at the interfaces of different
modeling sub-systems in order to assess the costs and benefits of interfacing.
• Development of a deeply integrated modeling system and generation of a repository
of modeling scenarios.
• First ideas for designing a “front end” to allow the interactive use of our integrated
modeling system.

5.2.3 Methods
The concept for integrating our biophysical and socio-economic modeling sub-systems at
different scales and for different agents has been outlined in Berger and Ringler (2002). We
choose a multi-level multi-agent approach consisting of cellular model components and
agent-based model components (Parker et al., 2002). The cellular model components
provide the spatial framework to link biophysical simulation models with socio-economic
decision models. The agent-based model components represent the decision rules of
human actors, their environmental feedbacks, and carry-over of spatially distributed
resources to the next simulation period. As stated above, we will organize our data and
processes by means of mathematical programming, a modeling concept that has proven its
suitability in capturing human decision making (Hazell and Norton, 1986). In principle, a
wide range of decision rules can be formalized in mathematical programming to reflect the
goals and decision rules of real-world resource managers. We will run “normative”
scenarios, where we maximize the aggregate economic benefits of using the water and
land resources in the Volta basin, and “positive” scenarios, where we analyze the particular
constraints and policy responses to various management decisions.
At the interfaces, especially between the biophysical simulation models of the cellular
component, we will test the sensitivity of shared variables. By shared variables, we refer
here to variables that are joint input for several models or that are output of one model,
directly fed into another model. Our approach is not to fully interface all models in our
modeling system but to concentrate our efforts of technical integration primarily on the most
“critical” variables. These tests for critical sensitivity will be based on the criterion of stability
ranges of input and output parameters. Highly sensitive parameters with relatively narrow
stability ranges will have to be tightly coupled through run-time links. Non-sensitive
parameters with wide stability ranges, in contrast, do not require run-time links and might

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therefore be loosely coupled through simple transfers of ASCII input files. One example,
where we already started applying this method, is the MM5 input of the land-surface model
in the atmosphere cluster.
Once we have identified critical parameters and appropriate forms of technical coupling, we
will implement our scientific modeling system and create user interfaces. For this process
of software implementation, we will also consider useful concepts employed in other
GLOWA projects, for example the application of the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
The approach we are currently working out is to design a “back end” and “front end” of our
modeling system. The back end will be implemented in modular form and later be
maintained and updated by the young West-African scientists trained in GLOWA Volta. It
will consist of various coupled models, in particular the meteorological and hydrological
models, which are run to generate a data base of modeling scenarios. The front end on the
other hand will provide user interfaces for policy simulation. We will here develop user
interfaces based on our experiences of the policy pilot project in the third sub-project of this
cluster. The current state of discussion is to implement interface functionality comparable to
the present spreadsheet application of the water use optimization model.

5.2.4 Milestones
• Report on simulation results for inter-sectoral water use optimization, based on
available data during phase I of GLOWA Volta (see also continued activities below)
• Report on critical sensitivity of shared model variables and appropriate forms of
interfacing
• Constructed spatial database of atmospheric and hydrologic modeling scenarios at
a resolution of 9 km2 (Cluster Atmosphere)
• “Blueprint” for technical integration of our various modeling systems (back end) and
for design of user interfaces (front end)
• Implementation of beta versions of our scientific information system

5.3 Sub-project D2: Household decision making and policy response

5.3.1 Research needs

The research on household decision-making and policy response has begun in Ghana in
the last year of phase I and will yield first results in phase II of GLOWA Volta. The research
question we are addressing is how the mainly rural farm households in the Volta basin
cope with the unreliable rainfall pattern. To answer this question, we developed two
conceptual modeling approaches: an econometric model for analyzing the determinants of
household migration decisions, and an agent-based fine-scale model for simulating
household water and land use decisions. In both models we employ primary data drawn
from our common sampling frame and collected during the field campaign in 2001. Since
both modeling approaches integrate biophysical and socio-economic data and processes,
they are subsumed under the research of this cluster. Nevertheless, there exist tight
linkages to several sub-projects in the land use cluster, especially to sub-project L5 (LUCC
modeling). In the second phase we will use these models to understand and predict the
likely responses of households to environmental and policy changes. We will focus here
especially on the adoption of irrigation practices and on household migration decisions.

5.3.2 Objectives
The specific objectives of this sub-project are:
• Identification of the determinants of households migration decisions, with special
attention paid to temporary migration as a coping strategy for rainfall variability and
possible land degradation
• Development of a spatial flow model of migration that will then be linked with the
water use optimization model at basin scale

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• Assessment of the financial and economic impacts of policy and technology

changes at farm household level
• Identification of the causal factors underlying the household land- and water use
decisions
• Prediction of likely household policy responses and their impacts on water- and
land-resources, in particular the switching from rain-fed to irrigated agriculture.

5.3.3 Methods
To answer the research questions related to the first two objectives, we will employ
econometric analysis of census, living standards, and own survey data drawn from our
common sampling frame. Some preliminary migration results based on community data
have already been published in Asante et al. (2002). We will now seek to verify these
empirical findings with data on household level. Depending on the quality of data, we might
conduct a special migration survey within a sub-sample of our surveyed households.
Specifically for the second research objective, we plan to apply a spatial interaction model
that captures both environmental and socio-economic factors underlying migration
decisions. Here exist direct links to related sub-projects in the land use cluster.
With respect to the last three research objectives, we will apply the method of agent-based
bio-economic modeling as described in Berger (2001) and Berger et al. (forthcoming).
Agent-based bio-economic models combine socio-economic factors influencing the farm
households’ objectives and constraints with biophysical factors affecting production
possibilities and the impacts of land management practices. Implemented as multi-agent
systems, these models may identify the optimal level of technology adoption and the
impact on incomes and natural resource conditions for heterogeneous household agents
(normative analysis). The models will also elucidate the likely policy responses and
outcomes from agent-agent and agent-environment interactions (positive analysis).
In Ghana, we will focus on households and irrigation schemes in the White Volta basin and
first undertake farming systems research. Based on the sampling strategy employed by
Woelcke (2002), we will conduct a second round of in-depth interviews within a sub-sample
of our household survey. Since we are especially interested in understanding the
conditions under which farm households switch from rain-fed to irrigated farming systems,
we will try to exploit synergies of our research with research at ZEF on community-based
water resource management. This research project funded by the Robert Bosch
Foundation and led by Stefanie Engel aims at a better understanding of success factors for
community irrigation schemes in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Knowledge from this
research will then inform our agent-based household model and be used for scenario
analysis (Engel and Berger, 2002).
In Burkina Faso, we plan to collaborate with colleagues from CIRAD, Montpellier, and
jointly implement an agent-based bio-economic model. CIRAD has undertaken bio-
economic research in Burkina Faso for many years and developed a bio-economic
modeling approach at village level (see Barbier 1996). Currently CIRAD is involved in farm
policy decision support for governmental agencies in Burkina Faso. With this research
collaboration, we will therefore be able to exploit considerable synergy effects and shortcut
much of the time-consuming basic farm research we had to undertake in the first phase in
Ghana.

5.3.4 Milestones
• Report on the macro and micro determinants of household migration decisions in
the Ghanaian part of the Volta basin
• Report on the spatial interactions between environmental and socio-economic
factors to be fed into the water use optimization model at basin level
• Financial and economic evaluation of farming systems in potentially irrigated areas
in the northern parts of the Volta basin

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• Development of two agent-based bio-economic models at household level, one in

Ghana (White Volta basin) and one in Burkina Faso (study region has still to be
identified)
• Estimation of policy response functions at household and community level,
especially concerning irrigation development (based on scenario analysis with
agent-based modeling)

5.4 Sub-project D3: Experimental application of scientific knowledge (policy pilot

study)

5.4.1 Research needs

At the GLOWA Status Conference in Munich, the Ghanaian Water Resources Commission
expressed its interest in jointly testing the scientific information system of GLOWA Volta at
local level. Promotion of scientific investigation and execution of pilot management studies
are two of the Commission’s responsibilities in implementing Integrated Water Resources
Management (IWRM). A first pilot management program was successfully completed in the
Densu Basin in the southern part of Ghana, outside the Volta Basin. Within the framework
of its new five-year strategic plan, the Commission has selected the White Volta Basin as
the second pilot basin management scheme. The White Volta Basin is located in the
northern part of Ghana and receives most of its river flow from Burkina Faso. The
Commission intends here to undertake a number of activities that will eventually culminate
in the establishment of a White Volta basin management board. These initial activities
include:
• An information acquisition exercise that has already yielded a WRC reconnaissance
mission to the region and an initial inventory of IWRM issues.
• A methodology to motivate local stakeholders for collaboration and participation in
IWRM.
• The establishment of the institutional framework for IWRM including the terms of
reference for the organization and working procedures for the White Volta
Management Board, the nomination of preliminary board members, the setting-up
of a basin office and recruitment of a basin coordinator.
• The initiation of technical cooperation between Burkina Faso and Ghana concerning
trans-boundary management of water resources.
In this sub-project we will test our scientific information system in cooperation with the
Ghanaian Water Resources Commission (WRC). This experimental application of scientific
knowledge provides an excellent opportunity of learning-by-doing. In sub-project W3
“Institutional Analysis” we mainly observe the processes in the White Volta Pilot Project.
Here, we will actively contribute by providing scientific input to the Commission’s efforts of
setting up a sub-basin water management board.

5.4.2 Objectives
Within the White Volta Pilot Project, we seek to achieve the following objectives:
• Generation of an integrated database for the White Volta Basin, including simulation
results from our atmospheric, hydrologic and land use models
• Facilitation of access to this database and training of staff members of the White
Volta Basin Office
• First test rounds for applying our different water use models in a policy dialogue at
regional level
• Suggestions to the WRC for an appropriate strategy to implement the White Volta
management board and to ensure stakeholder participation.

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5.4.3 Methods
To achieve the first objective, we will apply our coupled models of sub-project D-1 and
generate an integrated database for the White Volta basin. Based on this information, we
will conduct a diagnostic study for the Water Resources Commission and assess the state
and conditions of the sub-basin’s water resources. The database will also contain socio-
economic information from our own surveys in the water use cluster and especially from
the household surveys in sub-project D-2. Using econometric techniques, we will derive the
determinants of household and community water demand specifically for this sub-basin.
We will also provide first estimates of the magnitude of environmental and socio-economic
impacts as a consequence of changes in rainfall variability. Special attention will be paid to
the predictions of the onset of the rainy season in sub-project A3. We will test how this vital
information might be disseminated by the White Volta Basin Office and then be applied by
farmers and input providers.
With respect to the policy dialogue at regional level, there exist direct links to sub-project
W3. Based on results from this sub-project, we will identify the various groups of resource
users and the relative importance of their impacts on other groups. A suitable concept to
clarify the environmental and economic externalities between these different groups is a
payoff matrix (see for example Hazell et al, 2001). Following this stakeholder analysis, we
will then define the information needs on local and regional level to quantify the cells of the
payoff matrix. For this purpose, we will also use the results of our policy simulations in sub-
project D2. “Shadow prices” will be derived from our inter-sectoral and our agent-based
intra-sectoral water allocation models and then be used to compute the social costs of
particular water resource uses.
Furthermore, we will test the potential role of our scientific information system in providing
knowledge to non-scientists and in accompanying the process of policy dialogue. Together
with the WRC, we will apply our water allocation models in test rounds at the White Volta
management board to investigate the feasibility and acceptability of alternative forms of
resource management. For example, we will use our models to explore suitable
compensation mechanisms that might induce the affected resource users to take part in the
formulation and implementation of corrective policies. These modeling test rounds do not
only offer an opportunity to develop and improve the user interface (front end) of our
modeling system but also to train the board’s staff and thereby build research-based
capacity.
Our research will finally attempt to make suggestions to the WRC for policy implementation
based on our studies on the social, institutional and political setting. As proposed by the
WRC, in sub-project W3 we will especially address the research topic “perceptions of
communities and stakeholders towards the formulation and implementation of an effective
strategy for IWRM.’’ In an additional research project at ZEF, led by Stefanie Engel and
funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation, a comprehensive institutional analysis of
indigenous water management structures will be undertaken. Our suggestions to the WRC
will also include findings from this research on community-based water resources
management.

5.4.4 Milestones
• Assessment of the water resources in the White Volta basin (diagnostic study)
• Report on the determinants of household and community water demand in the
White Volta basin (see also sub-project W2)
• Tested user interfaces to White Volta basin database and trained staff at the basin
office
• Report on experimental rounds of applying our different water use models in policy
dialogue at regional level
• Report to the WRC on appropriate implementation strategies of IWRM, ensuring
stakeholder involvement in the White Volta basin

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5.5 Sub-project D4: Initiation of policy dialogue at basin level

5.5.1 Research needs

Preliminary results of our research were presented in July 2002 at the GLOWA Volta Policy
Workshop in Accra, featured in the Ghanaian television and newspapers. In addition to
reporting scientific progress to the public, the workshop’s objective was to maintain and
strengthen the institutional ties of our research and policy network. In a special working
group on policy dialogue and decision support, the foundation was laid for commencing the
process of applying the scientific knowledge of GLOWA Volta. The working group agreed
to implement a policy pilot study in order to test the use of our scientific information system
(see sub-project D-3 above). The group also decided to intensify the links of the existing
network of researchers, policy makers and stakeholders in the water sector. As a first step,
the ‘GLOWA Volta Policy Newsletter’ was initiated to regularly disseminate information
about results of research in the project and water-related policy issues in the Volta basin.
In this sub-project we will continue the process of policy dialogue at basin level through
which we seek to integrate the local and scientific knowledge generated with our
information system. The sub-project builds on the results of sub-projects D1-3; it will
therefore start with some time lag and overlap to a certain degree with phase III of GLOWA
Volta.

5.5.2 Objectives
In this sub-project we will address the following objectives:
• Revisit definitions of clients and services of our information system
• Revisit definitions of knowledge to be created and applied
• Facilitating access and use of our information system
• Evaluation of the outcomes of the policy dialogue
These four objectives are closely linked to the results in sub-project D3. Information
systems in developing countries have different clients and contexts of application than
policy information systems in industrialized countries. We will therefore carefully evaluate
the experimental application of scientific knowledge during the policy pilot and revisit the
following questions:
• What precisely are the wants and needs of our different “clients” in the Volta basin?
Which services should our information system offer to them?
• Based on this client and services analysis, which specific research questions have
to be addressed? Which type of knowledge can be synthesized? Which type of
knowledge should be generated?
• How do we facilitate access to our information system? How can we build the
capacity to make appropriate use of information and tools?
• How can we create effective means of evaluating the outcomes of the decision
support? How can we ensure the “sustainability” of our information system? Who
will update the system and maintain the policy dialogue?

5.5.3 Methods
From the beginning of this research project, GLOWA Volta strove towards a strong ‘client’
orientation. Instead of trying to get policy makers to use information that we will provide, we
intend to study the process of policy making and provide information that policy makers and
stakeholders want and need. GLOWA Volta does not try to ‘sell’ and ‘promote’ its
‘products.’ But the central idea of modern marketing, the matching of what an institution
has to offer and the wants and needs of the client, does fully apply to our goal of providing
science-based and applicable decision support.
To achieve the objectives of this sub-project, we will conduct a marketing analysis for our
scientific information system. As a first step, we will continue the segmentation of clients
and services that we started at the GLOWA Volta Workshop in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

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Together with our partners from West-African research and policy institutions, we identified
the information needs of several of our clients such as the Water Resources Commission,
the Volta River Authority, the Ministry of Water and Housing, but also of farmers and farm
input providers. We then identified the services that the GLOWA Volta information system
could potentially provide. These services range from results of computer simulations,
statistical information from our database and qualitative insights from case studies, to
observation and monitoring of policy-making processes.
For some of these services, we discussed how access and use of information might be
provided and how these services could be sustained after the end of GLOWA Volta. For
instance, farmers and input providers would greatly benefit from the predictions of the
onset of the rainy season in sub-project A3. This information could be transmitted to them
via appropriate channels, for example broadcasts of the agricultural extension service. The
meteorological model could later be maintained and run by the partially privatized Ghana
Meteorological Services Department. This example underlines how fruitful the application
of a marketing instrument can be in guiding the research in this sub-project.

5.5.4 Milestones
• ‘Marketing’ report on segmentation of clients and services of our scientific
information system
• Established scheme of regular information exchange and consultation with
authorities and policy makers
• Report on first experimental application of the trans-boundary water use
optimization model

5.6 Continued Activities

The main activity that was commenced in the second half of GLOWA Volta I and will
continue in this cluster during the second phase is the inter-sectoral water optimization
model. It was implemented as a spreadsheet-based application with dynamic links and
Macro languages. We have presented some first simulation results at the GLOWA Status
Conference and the GLOWA Volta Policy Workshop in Ghana. In the first half of the
second phase, we will run more of these simulations based on currently available data to
verify our preliminary results and include special scenarios on rainfall variability. The PhD
student working on the model will finalize his PhD in spring of 2004.

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