The First Armenia Water Resources Atlas Published
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The Program for Institutional and Regulatory Strengthening of Water Management in Armenia has been assisting the Water Resources Management Agency (WRMA) of the Ministry of Nature Protection (MNP) in technical design and construction of the State Water Cadastre Information System (SWCIS) over the last four years. The SWCIS consists of a centralized Data Warehouse that is operated and maintained by WRMA and stores state-wide water resources data; as well as six tabular databases at stakeholder institutions with customized export tools for transferring data from each database to the Data Warehouse.
The Program assisted in development and enhancement of the spatial component of the Data Warehouse, which provides an opportunity for constructing GIS-based maps on water resources and water systems both at national and basin levels. During the four-year assistance more than 50 thematic maps were developed, which provide a broad insight on current status of water resources and water systems, as well as demonstrate general overview of environment of Armenia.
USAID Armenia Water Program recently published a Water Resources Atlas for Armenia, the first attempt to integrate all available maps on water in one publication. The Atlas complements the National Atlas of Armenia (2007) through emphasizing water resources-related issues, pressures faced and trends of development of the sector.
The major cartographic sets include: basin management areas and main river basins; Water Objects Coding System – rivers, lakes, and reservoirs; main groundwater aquifers; groundwater monitoring network; surface water quality and quantity monitoring networks; water extraction points; Water User Association service areas and irrigated areas; average annual precipitation zones, as well as maps of nature protection areas and reserves, natural hazard zones such as seismic faults, & vegetation and soil zones. Multi-layered maps were constructed with a scale of 1:250,000, thus allowing for inclusion of detailed features at five Basin Management Areas of Armenia.
This major planning and monitoring tool is directly beneficial to all government agencies and ministries managing water supply, wastewater management, agriculture, and industry in the country. It can be used by decision-makers in the water sector as well as other countries in the region for planning and coordinating trans-boundary water issues.
