This is the version 2.0 release (update; as of May 10, 2007) of the International Water Management Institute's (IWMI's) Global irrigated area map (GIAM) and associated products and data.

The GIAM products are produced using time-series data of: (a) AVHRR 10-km monthly from 1997-1999, (b) SPOT 1-km monthly for 1999, (c) GTOPO30 1-km elevation, (d) CRU 50-km grid monthly precipitation from 1961-2000, (e) AVHRR derived 1-km forest cover, and (f) AVHRR 10-km skin temperature. In addition JERS SAR data was used for the African and South American rainforests. more...

Irrigation benchmarking is a process of comparative analysis of the performance that allows scheme managers to understand the service, financial and other aspects of their system’s performance in relation to other similar irrigation schemes.

Irrigation benchmarking is based on voluntary subscription of information by interested users. Other users may also undertake comparative analysis of the available data. more...

The Integrated Database Information System (IDIS) is an on-line data sharing platform that provides access to water, agriculture and environment scientific data to help researchers and their research partners improve the water productivity. IDIS contains over 1 billion records with focus on IWMI and CPWF basins. IDIS is funded by the CPWF and IWMI and hosted in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

IDIS System is developed using distributed databases approach and its planed that IDIS System will be established in all IWMI & CPWF basins. This will give better and fast access to researchers / scientists working locally in these basins. In this concern IDIS team started establishing different node. Please select your desired node. more...

The IWMI World Water and Climate Atlas gives irrigation and agricultural planners rapid access to accurate data on climate and moisture availability for agriculture. The Atlas includes monthly and annual summaries for precipitation, temperature, humidity, hours of sunshine, evaporation estimates, wind speed, total number of days with and without rainfall, days without frost and Penman-Montieth reference evapotranspiration rates. The core of the Atlas is data assembled from weather stations around the world for the period 1961-1990. Data can be extracted in summary, manipulated using the Atlas software, or exported in a standardized format for use in other applications. Users can also include their own local data for a more detailed picture of a particular area. more...

Droughts continue to be a major issue affecting water resources and agriculture in both developed and developing countries. The latter still suffer from droughts the most. Drought-related research in developing world remains largely uncoordinated. This site attempts to bring the resources of these countries together. We welcome all organizations and individuals involved in drought-related work in developing countries to join our drought network and to share the information about their on-going activities. The site aims to become, with time, a portal of drought-related information for the network. more...

The IWMI Global Wetlands Initiative seeks to provide a multi-purpose and multiple-scale approach to wetlands, wetland conservation, and the wise-use of wetland resources. In particular, we put an emphasis on wetlands within agricultural landscapes and landscape approaches for better management of agricultural interfaces with the terrestrial water cycle. A broad program of wetland research and outreach activities seeks to delineate and understand the interactions of agriculture with terrestrial aquatic ecosystems, its role in meeting expanding global food security needs, and the urgent necessity of conserving wetland biodiversity. more...

The TSDC online data sharing platform supports information exchange for Tsunami related rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts. It is intended as a platform to provide easy access to most of the available satellite remote sensing data for the affected region. Much of the initial data currently available on this site has been provided by NASA, USGS, and individual commercial vendors in response to the Tsunami disaster. The CGIAR-CSI has developed this site as part of it Tsunami Data Sharing Platform. This site is provided by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Many thanks to CGNET in Palo Alto for donating the server, the bandwidth, and hosting this site; and to the CGIAR ICT-KM Program, IWMI, and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) for providing funding and support. more...

Eco-Hydrological Databases on this site contain specific information pertaining to various aspects of functioning, requirements and management of freshwater ecosystems. The information is extracted from formally published papers and reports, unpublished documents, Internet sites and experts’ opinions.

Development of eco-hydrological databases is seen as a continuous process rather then once-off exercise. In this sense, none of the presented databases is complete. Each database welcomes new entries. On-line input of new entries in pre-defined formats is allowed for. Interested specialists worldwide can make their direct contributions to database development. The developers will be grateful for such contributions. The intention is to make databases "internationally owned". IWMI provides general maintenance of this web site as well as the maintenance of individual databases. more...

This website offers information on projects, studies, better practices, databases and expertise for work related to water and poverty across the globe.

The project on “Pro-Poor Intervention Strategies in Irrigated Agriculture in Asia” is being undertaken by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), with financial support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) under its program on Agriculture and Natural Resources Research at CGIAR Centers. It is a multi-country project with case studies in six developing member countries (DMCs) of ADB: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam. The main objective of this project is to determine realistic options for increasing returns to poor farmers through improving the overall performance of established medium and large-scale surface irrigation systems (canals). Case studies under the project was carried out in collaboration with national research and development organizations and agencies in the participating countries. more...

Africa has more than 60 transboundary river basins which together cover more than 60 percent of the continent’s total area. In fact, every African country, with the exception of the island states such as Madagascar and Cape Verde, contains at least one such basin, and many countries’ territories are dominated by transboundary basins. In addition to transboundary surface waters, an unknown but substantial number of aquifers cross beneath Africa’s national borders. The result is that most water resource management in Africa is in fact transboundary water management. more...

The IWMI's Global Map of Rainfed Cropland Areas (GMRCA) is a by-product derived when working on IWMI's Global Map of Irrigated Areas (GMIA). The datasets approaches, and methods used to produce GMRCA are, to a great extent, similar to producing GIAM. Thereby, we refer the reader to detailed documentation on GIAM made available in this web site.

The Global Rainfed Croplands were estimated at 1.132 billion hectares at the end of the last millennium, from the GMRCA products (Biradar et al., 2007). This is 2.78 times the TAAI or net irrigated areas (407 Mha) of the World. The GMRCA area provided here is for the June-October period only. Like, GMIA it is possible to estimate seasonal Global Rainfed Cropland areas using the products and methods developed in this study. However, double crop rainfed is considered negligible. more...

IWMI's Data Storehouse Pathway (DSP) provides several terabytes of high scientific quality remote sensing and GIS products that are available through an online application. The site has more than 3,000 registered users from more than 80 countries.

The Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) Unit (RS GIS Unit) of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), is a centralized facility for all spatial data related activities of IWMI at the headquarters in Sri Lanka and Regional Offices located in different parts of the world. more...

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has embarked on Global wetland Mapping project (GWMP) using remote sensing and secondary data. The overarching goal of the GWMP is to map, characterize, and classify the wetlands of the world at various scales or pixel resolutions through a wide range of partnerships including the Ramsar Convention. Given the complexity and costs involved in mapping vast areas, necessity for developing methods using freely available data was identified as a top priority.

Within this context, research work was carried out to develop a methodology for mapping wetlands using freely available High-resolution Landsat ETM+ 30m Geocover and SRTM 90-m data. In our first attempts Landsat Geocover and the SRTM data, both having global coverage, were selected so the methods developed at one location can be applied elsewhere. more...

The overarching goal of this web portal will be to establish a comprehensive national Knowledge Base System for Sri Lanka (KBS-Lanka) that encompasses disaster preparedness and rapid response for droughts and other natural disasters, and also enables natural resource assessment and monitoring on a near-real-time basis using remote sensing and other spatial techniques. The KBS-Lanka project has developed a near-real-time (fortnightly and/or monthly) system on the following 3 key components using satellite sensor data from advanced systems that are available free, from reliable sources: more...

South Asia Drought Monitor (SADM) is an evolving drought monitoring tool, which, in its present form is based entirely on remote sensing data. It aims to supply timely information on drought onset, progression and areal extent. This near-real-time drought monitoring and reporting system currently covers Afghanistan, Pakistan and western parts of India. The system is based on drought-related indices derived from high resolution remote-sensing data (MODIS).

The unique feature of the system is the use of earlier established relationship between drought-related indices obtained from MODIS and AVHRR data. These data types have different pixel resolution and optical characteristics (Thenkabail et al, 2004). The results ensure the continuity of the two data sets and should allow the reports on drought development in the region to be made in near-real time with a spatial resolution of 500 meters and at 8 or 16 days interval. more...

Thematic emphasis is on ecological changes in semi-arid Central- and West-Asia, with the objective to investigate possibilities for a more meaningful, regional assessment of eco-system health from space. Though the primary interest is a regional one the results are intended to be detailed enough in order to be useful for local decision making. To explain any changes in eco-system health and their drivers, research effort is on vegetation, soils, climate, hydrology, and human activities. This will be achieved through various innovative techniques including a classifier that is sensitive to functional characteristics of vegetation or an algorithm that allows the separation of climate induced from subtle, human induced green biomass changes. more...

GeoNetwork is a standardized and decentralized spatial information management environment, designed to enable access to geo-referenced databases, cartographic products and related metadata from a variety of sources, enhancing the spatial information exchange and sharing between organizations and their audience, using the capacities of the internet. This approach of geographic information management aims at facilitating a wide community of spatial information users to have easy and timely access to available spatial data and to existing thematic maps that might support informed decision making. more...

The CGIAR-CSI GeoPortal is able to provide SRTM 90m Digital Elevation Data for the entire world. The SRTM digital elevation data, produced by NASA originally, is a major breakthrough in digital mapping of the world, and provides a major advance in the accessibility of high quality elevation data for large portions of the tropics and other areas of the developing world. The SRTM digital elevation data provided on this site has been processed to fill data voids, and to facilitate it's ease of use by a wide group of potential users. This data is provided in an effort to promote the use of geospatial science and applications for sustainable development and resource conservation in the developing world. Digital elevation models (DEM) for the entire globe, covering all of the countries of the world, are available for download on this site. more...