Author : Alibuyog, Nathaniel

Summary : This paper aims to describe and underscore the significant role of GIS and RS technologies as an integrative platform toward improved water governance and agricultural productivity and policy. It also seeks to highlight case studies wherein GIS and RS had played a significant role in a better understanding of the regional surface and groundwater dynamics, the susceptibility of groundwater resource to extreme hydrologic events, as well as the technologies’ potential cascading impact on agricultural policy and water governance.

The different case studies presented in this paper indicate the importance of GIS. When combined with hydrologic models, it provides a valuable platform for addressing different water resources issues and concerns, such as water quality, groundwater movement, groundwater contamination, river restoration, flood prediction, and management at different scales. The case studies show the vulnerability of groundwater resources from a point and non-point pollution as well as from the unregulated use of the groundwater resource. Unregulated groundwater extraction beyond the safe yield of the aquifer system may result in groundwater mining, saline intrusion, and land subsidence. Nonetheless, the ability of GIS to map and delineate areas that are vulnerable to groundwater pollution or groundwater mining provides essential information that may serve as a basis for the development of a management plan to protect and ensure the sustainability of the groundwater resource.