Syrian crisis altered region’s land and water resources
New precedent
“It’s the first time that we could do large-scale remote sensing analysis in a war zone to actually prove a causal relation between conflict and water resources,” said lead author Marc Muller, a postdoctoral researcher in Gorelick’s lab. “With these new tools, you can do analysis and iterate very quickly – the effects were so strong, it was really easy to see right away.”
The research sets a precedent for using remote sensing data to understand environmental impacts in war zones or other areas where information otherwise could not be collected.
“To be able to get this type of detailed information about a region where data on the ground are scarce is an important contribution,” said Gorelick, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “This shows in the extreme case how relevant information can be obtained in an efficient and scientifically valid manner.”
Refugees in Jordan
Syria’s abandonment of irrigated agriculture, combined with the region’s recovery from a severe drought, caused increased Yarmouk River flow to downstream Jordan, one of the most water-poor countries in the world. However, Jordan has absorbed hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria since 2013.
“It’s slightly good news for Jordan, but it’s not a big bonus compared to what Jordan has had to give up and sacrifice for the refugees,” Gorelick said. “Even in terms of providing water for the refugees, this transboundary flow is not compensation.”
Despite this unexpected result, Jordan’s flow from the Yarmouk River remains substantially below the volume expected under bilateral agreements with Syria, a result of legal and illegal reservoirs built in Syria, according to Gorelick.
The Jordan Water Project
Gorelick and his team have cooperated with Jordan on water management research since 2013 through the Jordan Water Project (JWP), a National Science Foundation-funded international effort to analyze freshwater resource sustainability. While experts speculate climate change can lead to conflict, Yoon said it was interesting to examine Syria from a different perspective.
“In the past few years, there’s been increasing focus on how climate change and drought influences conflict, but there hasn’t been as much research on how conflict can actually lead to impact on the environment and water resources,” Yoon said.
Ranked as one of the world’s top three water-poor countries, Jordan faces serious potential impacts from climate change. One of the key goals of the JWP is to develop an integrated hydro-economic model of the Jordanian water system in order to explore policy interventions.
Gorelick also directs the Global Freshwater Initiative at Stanford and runs the Hydrogeology and Water Resources Program at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
— Read more in Marc François Müller et al., “Impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on land use and transboundary freshwater resources,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (5 December 2016) (doi:10.1073/pnas.1614342113/-/DCSupplemental)
