ZEF Bonn

influences the farmers' own land-use behaviour. Besides, farmers have to search for
fire-free land use in any case. For legal and political initiatives restricting the use of
fire in land preparation are putting growing pressure on them. Recently, farmers in
the study region were observed collecting plant material to cover the extremely bare
soil in pepper plantations. Perhaps such biomass transfer systems with permanent
land use and mulch produced elsewhere will dominate future land use patterns in
the region. But cutting and chopping of the vegetation on fallowed fields will certainly
not lose its importance in the near future, particularly when land demand
increases. This applies to the project region, but also to many other tropical rainforest
areas world-wide.
3.2 Optimisation of water allocation
in the Volta basin
The goal of the GLOWA Volta project is to develop, in collaboration with our
Ghanaian and Burkinabe partners, a decision-support system to optimise water allocation
within the Volta basin, curbing potential conflicts over this resource.
Understanding the complex relations between the water cycle, climate, and economic
development requires insights from many scientific disciplines. The real challenge
of the GLOWA program is not only to collect information using the various
means and methods of these disciplines, but also, and above all, to tie all this information
together in a meaningful and quantitative way. We identified three integrative
focal points where added value can be gained. In each of these, questions are
answered that cannot be addressed by a single science:
● atmosphere/surface interactions,
● land-use change modelling, and
● water-use optimisation.
At each of these interfaces, scientists
are challenged to collect and
manage their information in a way
and on a scale that enables neighbouring
disciplines to work jointly
with that data and generate additional
information.
Atmosphere/surface interactions
need to be understood to account
for the feedback between climate
and change in land-surface properties.
The extensive efforts to simulate
regional climate change with
the MM5 atmospheric model
depend crucially on the proper
quantification of the effects that
land surface changes have on the
atmosphere. The integrative challenge
is bridging the gap between
meteorology and hydrology. In
communicating with each other
these two disciplines are confron-
Research
The challenge of the GLOWA
program is to tie information
together in a meaningful and
quantitative way. Scientists
need to collect and manage
their information with a view
to enabling neighbouring disciplines
to generate additional
information.
Akasombo dam
and the Volta Lake
37