Malaysia depends heavily on rivers as a source for water supply, irrigation, and sustaining the livelihood of local communities. The evolution of land use in urban areas due to rapid development and the continuous problem of illegal discharge have had a serious adverse impact on the health of the country's waterways. Klang River requires extensive rehabilitation and remediation before its water could be utilised for a variety of purposes. A reliable and rigorous remediation work plan is needed to identify the sources and locations of streams that are constantly polluted. This study attempts to investigate the feasibility of utilising a temporal and spatial risk quotient (RQ) based analysis to make an accurate assessment of the current condition of the tributaries in the Klang River catchment area. The study relies on existing data sets on Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), and Ammonia (NH3) to evaluate the water quality at thirty strategic locations. Analysis of ammonia pollution is not only based on the limit established for river health but was expanded to include the feasibility of using the water for water intake, recreational activities, and sustaining fish population. The temporal health of Klang River was evaluated using the Risk Matrix Approach (RMA) based on the frequency of RQ > 1 and associated colour-coded hazard impacts. By using the developed RMA, the hazard level for each parameter at each location was assessed and individually mapped using Geographic Information System (GIS). The developed risk hazard mapping has high potential as one of the essential tools in making decisions for a cost-effective river restoration and rehabilitation.
Global warming has led to sea levels raise (SLRs) and Malaysia is no exception to this problem. Especially for low-lying coastal areas including the Kuala Kedah area which is active in agricultural and fisheries activities. Farmers have had to bear up to 75 % of yield losses due to seawater breaches since 2016. Therefore, this study is designed to assess the impact of seawater encroachment on water quality through spatial technology approaches and hydrodynamic modeling related to the growth of paddy trees. The study was conducted during two different paddy cultivation seasons namely Season 1-2019 and Season 2-2019 which take place in the southwest and northeast monsoon in Kuala Kedah, Malaysia. The study involved three phases, which are the assessment of salinity and pH concentration levels, the assessment of the health of paddy crops through multispectral image analysis involving three plant indices (VI), namely Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Blue Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (BNDVI) and Normalized Difference Red Edge (NDRE), and finally, the assessment of the impact of SLR through the numerical method in MIKE 21 for hydrodynamic modeling considering two conditions that are without mitigation factor (K1) and with existing mitigating factor (K2). According to the findings, the salinity concentration trend is decreasing across the growth stage during Season 1-2019, whereas it is the contrary during Season 2-2019. It was discovered that during the study period for both tidal events, 73 % of the 44 sampling points in Season 1-2019, as opposed to just 3 % in Season 2-2019, were categorized as Class 4 and Class 5. Even though there were fluctuations throughout the observation, the pH reading is still within the allowed range of 6.5 to 9.0 for the estuary area. Following that, the ANOVA analysis proved that salinity concentration a statistically significant difference with tidal variations and pH levels. Moreover, the multispectral image analysis findings revealed that the VI value was correlated with both the yield and the health of the rice crop, with R-square values of 0.842 compared to 0.706 and 0.575 for NDVI and BNDVI values, respectively. It confirmed that NDRE granted a more accurate and reliable measurements. Additionally, the hydrodynamic simulation results demonstrated that, if the mitigation factors were considered in the modeling, overflow seawater to the mainland could be reduced by up to 20 %, reducing the impact of coastal flooding on the local area as well as the nearby rice cultivation area. Ultimately, these three elements-water quality, vegetation index, and hydrodynamic modeling-can assist in identifying the underlying cause of the problem and develop short and long-term solutions.
Iraq is facing a dire water crisis due to the decrease in water quantities flow in Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Due to population growth, several studies estimated the water shortage in 2035 to be 44 Billion Cubic Meter (BCM). Thus, Water Budget-Salt Balance Model (WBSBM) has been developed, applied and examined for the Euphrates River basin to compute the net water saving from Non-Conventional Water Resources (NCWRs). WBSBM includes 4-stages; the first is to identify the required data correspond to the conventional water resources in the study-area. The second stage is demonstrating the water-users activities. Thirdly, develop model through the proposed NCWR projects that reflect the required data. The final stage involves net water saving computation while applying all the NCWR projects simultaneously. The results obtained the optimal potential net water saving amount, which are 6.823 and 6.626 BCM/year in 2025 and 2035, respectively. In conclusion, the proposed WBSBM model has comprehensively examined different scenarios of utilizing NCWRs and has determined the optimal potential the net water saving amounts.