Analysis of Hydrology Parameters in a Tropical Wetland as an Early Approach to Identify a Drought Risk in a Peatland Area

Abstract

The hydrological condition can be determined by investigating local data or analyzing historical climatological records. Several methods can approach the wetland condition, including peatland in general. The definition of physical properties to assess critical groundwater table depths is one of them. Another way is to define the requirements in the area that can be approached by determining the condition of the wetland area for general. Understanding and assessing the wetland state is necessary to measure and evaluate the wetland situation, and it can be done by analyzing wetland hydrology parameters. Due to the necessity to mitigate change conditions in a wetland, it is common to know that either flood or drought will derive a difficult situation both in a wetland and a peatland but especially for a peatland, drought condition is severe. This study aims to observe the wetland condition and identify whether the wetland area has drought risk potential, especially in the peatland site. The study was conducted by directly taking data from the study location and downloading satellite data from local and regional websites: the local climatology agency Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG Indonesia), and the Jaxa website. The data from satellite needs to be used related to the limitation of ground data in the study location. The result showed that the satellite has an excellent relationship to the ground data with a pretty low root mean square error (RMSE) number. In addition, it showed the correlation between the amount of monthly rainfall and evapotranspiration with the water table elevation. It can be concluded at the initial conclusion that the decreased rainfall and the high evapotranspiration in a particular month can be expected the drought risk potentially will happen.