On September 19, 2018, the Water Environment Federation published an article on their Stormwater Report blog focused on WRAP’s collaboration with NASA DEVELOP to use satellite data to assist with identifying the most suitable locations for rain harvesting systems.
Read the full article here.
Story from the NASA DEVELOP program, published on the NASA Earth Observatory website. For the original story, click here.
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Water shortages can lead to major sanitation issues at schools, so students have to play an active role in managing it. At Sur Baher, the most significant use of water is for flushing toilets, which stop working if there is not enough water. If the water runs out, school administrators must buy it from the city. In other regions, the schools even close because of water shortages.
A team of scientists with the NASA DEVELOP program is helping address these water shortages by collaborating with a nonprofit called Water Resources Action Project (WRAP). WRAP designs and constructs rainwater harvesting systems for schools in the Middle East to capture rainfall during the five-month rainy season for use later. Selecting a geographically promising area is time-consuming and tedious work though for the small, volunteer-based team. The NASA DEVELOP team is using satellite data to help WRAP more easily identify suitable locations for the rainwater harvesting systems.
The NASA-developed tool helps locate potential areas by looking at the region’s historical satellite data of precipitation, groundwater availability, land elevation, and evapotranspiration (the amount of water evaporating from the leaves of plants and from the land surface).
The maps show some of the satellite data used to determine suitable locations. The first image shows precipitation from 2006 to 2016, which has remained fairly constant. The precipitation data came from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission and were validated with NOAA’s Global Surface Summary of the Day.
The second set of maps shows groundwater availability as observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). Since 2006, the Middle East has experienced a net decrease in groundwater.
“We wanted to incorporate data from NASA’s Earth-observing satellites, specifically on precipitation,” said Vishal Arya, who worked on the project at NASA Langley Research Center. “We looked for a correlation between precipitation and environmental factors that could be used to identify areas that would be good candidates for a rainwater harvesting system.”
The data sets have been combined into an interactive Google Earth interface tool called Precipitation Interface for the Middle East (PrIME). PrIME also includes land elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and evapotranspiration data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite. The tool also includes school locations.
“NASA has served as an invaluable resource, providing WRAP with a readily available decision-making tool,” said Brendan McGinnis, Executive Director of WRAP. “The satellite data show specific numbers over areas affected with limited rainfall and groundwater, rather than us approximating those measurements.”
Before the PrIME tool, WRAP set up rainwater harvesting systems in ten different schools across the Middle East. Now, WRAP has expanded its efforts into Jordan and Palestine. McGinnis hopes to have similar success as its existing programs. At the Al-Afaq School for Special Education in East Jerusalem, WRAP’s rainwater harvesting system has provided nearly 70 percent of the school’s total water needs. Other schools have depended less on water provided by the city.
“The rainwater harvesting system helped us minimize water consumption from the city, especially in winter, and decreased water bills,” said Salman.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data courtesy of Vishal Arya and the NASA DEVELOP Program. Story by Kasha Patel.
Malcolm Siegel, PhD, MPH
Director of Education and Operations
Water Resource Action Project, Inc.
The first few weeks of May 2018, were a stressful period, characterized by events that seemed to threaten the stability of the Middle East. Many rejoiced in the 70th Israeli Independence Day and the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. However, the potential for armed conflict with Iran at the Israeli- Syrian border, the bloody protests at the border with Gaza and the fear that the relocation of the Embassy would ignite unrest in the West Bank led many to despair that prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians were dimmer than ever. During this same period, my wife, Leora and I embarked on an environmental peacebuilding trip sponsored by the Water Resources Action Project, one of the organizations supported by the Environmental Peacebuilding Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of New Mexico.
Environmental peacebuilding promotes peace in areas of conflict by finding a common ground to solve environmental issues that affect all people in the region. In many parts of the Middle East, people struggle to find agreement over water use, due to environmental, political and cultural differences. By turning the shared challenges with freshwater supply into opportunities for cooperative environmental projects, trustful relationships with people from diverse backgrounds can be built.
The Water Resources Action Project (WRAP) brings water harvesting systems, environmental education, and cross-cultural exchanges to K-12 students in Israel, Palestine, Jordan and the US. Arab and Jewish students get to know “the other” and begin to build trusting relationships as they work on common environmental issues and share their stories in person and on-line. In the past seven years, we have built water harvesting systems in a network of nine elementary middle and high schools in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan.
The 2018 Environmental Peacebuilding Project Tour lasted from May 1 to May 13, 2018. During this time, we held an environmental education workshop attended by 20 educators from 9 Arab and Jewish schools in Israel. We visited 5 sites where WRAP rainwater systems have been installed, visited three additional schools that wish to join the WRAP network, and met with representatives from four additional schools in Israel and Jordan that would also like to join WRAP. We attended Environmental Fairs where WRAP had made significant contributions and gave awards to students that had competed in the 2018 WRAP Environmental Photo contest. Some excerpts from our trip report follow.
MAY 3, 2018, WRAP TEACHERS WORKSHOP – KIBBUTZ GEZER, ISRAEL.
On May 3, 2018 the first WRAP Workshop was held at Kibbutz Gezer, involving 20 educators and four students from nine schools (Hebrew and Arabic). WRAP engineer and Israel’s “Water Harvesting Guru” Amir Yechieli shared information about the water harvesting systems that he has installed throughout the world. I described an international student citizens science project, the EarthEcho Water Challenge. Educators were enthusiastic about participating in the 2018 Fall semester and received water testing equipment for additional tests beyond the standard EarthEcho tests. The students from Sur Baher Girls School in East Jerusalem made an English presentation about the science projects at their school. This was not their first visit to Kibbutz Gezer. Students from Sur Baher are connected to students at Kibbutz Gezer in Israel and students at the Albuquerque Academy on the multi- lingual plant4peace blog. This year, students from Sur Baher have already made two visits to the students at Kibbutz Gezer.
Malcolm Siegel describes the EarthEcho water Challenge
The Kibbutz Gezer gardener describes rain water harvesting system
Teacher Zoubaida Salman and students present results of projects at Sur Baher
Arab students from Sur Baher meet with Jewish students from Kibbutz Gezer earlier in the year
MAY 9, 2018, SUR BAHER GIRLS SCHOOL, ENVIRONMENTAL FAIR
At the invitation of Zoubaida Salman, our contact at Sur Baher, we attended their annual environmental fair, where students filled the school with posters, experiments and demonstrations of their science projects. Ms. Salman is an effective advocate for encouraging young Arab girls to get excited about science and technology. Students from her environmental club visit science labs and attend lectures at local universities. The harvested rainwater from the WRAP system at Sur Baher is used in restrooms and in an herb garden. The students process the herbs to make personal care products such as soaps that they sell to their community and at Kibbutz Gezer. Leora presented an award to a student who won the WRAP environmental photo competition and Malcolm presented an award to the school principal for participation in the WRAP program.
Zoubaida Salman and students
Leora Siegel and students discussing an anatomy project
MAY 10, 2018: VISIT TO A-TUR SCHOOL, EAST JERUSALEM
Batool Salman is a science teacher who works part time as an education consultant for the Israel Ministry of Education. She invited us to the Science Fair Day at an Arab school in A Tur and gave us a tour of the school’s facilities. The school has a very large rain water catchment cistern (dating from the Romans) that is being placed into service. Batool hopes that the school can join the WRAP educational network; she would like assistance in purchasing a weather station, flow meters, solar energy panels and chemical test equipment.
Leora Siegel and Batool Salman in school hydroponics garden
Students displaying their robotics project
FINAL COMMENTS – WE ARE NOT ALONE
WRAP is a member of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMPEP), a consortium of over 110 organizations focused on facilitating people-to-people interactions involving Jews and Arabs in Israel and Palestine. At our workshop at Kibbutz Gezer, Doubie Schwartz, the ALLMEP regional coordinator told us that he estimates that 10,000 people, “10,000 points of light”, are now involved in their programs. Working together on common environmental issues allows Palestinians and Israelis to learn about each other and avoid focusing on conflicting historical narratives and controversial government policies. As Tom Friedman of the New York Times wrote about the Kidron Valley/Wadi Nar Master Plan (another joint Israeli-Palestinian environmental project supported by the Environmental Peacebuilding Fund): “It’s relationships of trust between neighbors, that create healthy interdependencies — ecological and political. They are the hardest things to build, but also the hardest things to break once in place.”
POST SCRIPT: MAY 15, 2018.
WRAP has also installed rainwater systems at two sites in Northern Israel: the Bedouin village of Tuba Zangaria and Kibbutz Amir. WRAP provides funds for joint field trips for students from the two schools. After we returned from Israel, we received the following note and pictures from Liad Amir, our local coordinator, about their second field trip this year:
“16 students and 2 teachers from the Bedouin School in Tuba Zangaria came to visit the Eynot Yarden Kibbutz School. We drank herbal tea and cookies, did a tour in the school, visited the water harvesting system and came back to the environmental area (greenhouse) to make small signs in Hebrew and Arabic for the fruit trees and for the plants in the herbal. It was a ray of light next to the darkness in the rest of our country… “
Students from the Bedouin village of Tuba Zangaria and Kibbutz Amir work together on environmental projects sponsored by the Water Resources Action Project and the Environmental Peacebuilding Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of New Mexico.
WRAP’s 2017 Progress Report detailing highlights from 2017 and what’s to come in 2018 is now available. Click the image below to read!
WRAP and its partners recently held a WASH and water harvesting training with children ages 14 to 16 at the Sharhabil bin Hassaneh EcoPark in Jordan. Click here for more pictures and details.
Students and volunteers at Kibbutz Gezer help to position rain barrels
The installation of WRAP’s seventh rainwater harvesting project, a rain barrel system at Kibbutz Gezer Education Center located in central Israel between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, was completed in March 2017. Gezer is a pluralistic community, with both Jews and non-Jews, observant and nonobservant, many active in developing better relations between Jews and Arabs. The Education Center has 100 children in pre-school/kindergarten and 80 youth in grades 1-12. The Center is located on a green campus in the center of the community with staff of 30 educators that view the outdoors as the real classroom.
The rain barrel system consists of a filter tank and five storage barrels, which can collectively hold up to 8,500 liters of rainwater. The rainwater is collected from roofs and directed into the rain barrels where it is then used for toilet flushing and gardening at the Center.
Students help with installation of rainwater system pump
The rainwater harvesting system supplements the strong environmental education program already in place at the Kibbutz, strengthening the students’ connection to water, nature, and our limited resources. Students will be involved with the care and maintenance of the system, measuring rainfall and water usage, and learning about the importance of water in the environment. WRAP will work with the Kibbutz to foster relationships with its other partner schools, initially through an exchange of information, and subsequently through personal relationships.
WRAP plans to expand upon the rainwater harvesting system installed at Kibbutz Gezer to include an adjacent school building. The expansion will result in the water collected to be used more efficiently and additional children (1st and 2nd graders) to be included in the educational program. The expansion is tentatively scheduled for November 2017. Total estimated cost is $2,800.
The Water Resources Action Project (WRAP) needs your help to bring more Environmental Peacebuilding activities to schools in Israel and Palestine with water harvesting systems. WRAP systems in two East Jerusalem Palestinian schools, two West Bank villages, a Bedouin village, and two Israeli kibbutzim are part of a network of over 140 school water harvesting systems in Israel and Palestine.
The Environmental Peacebuilding Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of New Mexico is sponsoring a scholarship to help a young New Mexican (age 18-25) attend the annual J Street Conference in Washington, DC, from February 25-28, 2017, as a member of WRAP. Environmental peacebuilding promotes peace in areas of conflict by finding a common ground to solve environmental issues that affect all people in the region.
The scholarship of up to $500 will help reimburse travel and accommodations costs for the recipient who will be attending the J Street annual conference. In addition, WRAP will reimburse the scholarship recipient’s conference registration fee. The recipient will help at the WRAP exhibit and information table during part of the conference and will be free to attend most of the conference sessions.
Applications for the scholarship are open through January 23, 2017. Click here to download the application.
Eligibility: The scholarship is open to all young people between the ages of 18-25 who (1) have demonstrated involvement in or are interested in learning about environmental peacebuilding, (2) are involved in or are interested in learning about J Street and the Water Resources Action Project, and (3) currently reside or attended high school or college in New Mexico. There are no restrictions on eligibility based on race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability status.
WRAP’s 2016 Progress Report detailing highlights from 2016 and what’s to come in 2017 is now available. Click the image below to read!
