Liaison Office

Field Surveys on Thailand Reservoirs

国名
Thailand

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JIRCAS has participated into the collaborative program, supported by MAFF subsidized fund, to promote the Africa rice cultivation in sub-Sahara region. The purpose of this program is to investigate the current situation of water facilities such as reservoirs and water management technologies in this region. Water management and reservoir construction technologies have been widely used in Asia for many years. To examine the possibility to apply these existing experiences and technologies into Africa, with the collaboration of Land Development Department (LDD), we made field surveys on small irrigation system such as reservoirs in Thailand in July 2013. In center area of Thailand, two provinces, Prachin Buri and Nakhon Nayok, were selected as the survey areas. We collected the information on the water management and water resource use of reservoirs, and interviewed beneficiary farmers and local LDD officers. Two larger reservoirs (water-surface areas are about 100,000 m2 and 50,000 m2, respectively) in Prachin Buri province and two small reservoirs (volume of water is about 1,260 m3) in Nakhon Nayok province were visited. It was found that large reservoirs have strong influences on water use and agricultural production to beneficiary farmers due to the bad management system. And the water from small reservoir, which usually costs 20,000 baht (approximate 60,000 Japanese yuan) to build, is mainly used by daily life and home garden. Meanwhile, capturing fish from the reservoirs during rainy season also improve farmers' income. In north-eastern province of Thailand, 1,260 projects in Khon Kaen, which are promoted by Thailand government as small reservoir improvement projects, were investigated. Through our investigations, we found that many technologies in Thailand can be applied into Africa. For example, the Vetiver Grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) technology is used in local area for sediment control around the reservoirs due to gradually decline in function of sediment accumulates after reservoirs are upgraded. Moreover, because of the rapid water loss by seepage from reservoirs on sand soils, the bentonite (fine clay) is applied to reduce seepage.

  • Reservoir field survey (Nakhon Nayok) Reservoir field survey (Nakhon Nayok)
  • Vetiver around reservoir (Khon Kaen) Vetiver around reservoir (Khon Kaen)

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